Ticket to ride (5/22/23)

Good morning, and happy Monday.

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Today’s newsletter:
🌜 NASA’s lunar lander pick
🚀 Ax-2 departs
🗓️ The week ahead

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NASA Taps Blue Origin for Second Lunar Lander

Blue Origin will provide the second lunar lander for the Artemis program, NASA announced on Friday, giving Jeff Bezos’ company a major victory after losing out to SpaceX on the first lander award in 2021.

“An additional, different lander will help ensure that we have the hardware necessary for a series of landings,” said NASA chief Bill Nelson.

The Artemis program will now have two lander providers—SpaceX and Blue Origin—ensuring diversification and enough vehicles to keep up with the proposed mission cadence. The Starship lunar lander is currently slated to debut in 2025 on Artemis III, while the Blue Origin lunar lander will commence service no earlier than 2029 on Artemis V.

A hefty price tag: The total cost of Blue Origin’s lunar lander will be over $7B, with NASA contributing nearly $3.4B and Bezos’ company spending “well north” of that on its own.

Blue Origin’s lander

The hydrogen-fueled lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon (not to be confused with the beer), will be 16 m tall and designed to fly on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which is expected to fly for the first time in summer 2024. Blue Moon will have a dry mass of 16 metric tons and 45+ metric tons when loaded with propellant.  

• The spacecraft will be fully reusable and provide transport to and from the Lunar Gateway in the Moon’s orbit.

• Blue Moon will utilize a cislunar refueling space tug to transport propellant from LEO.

In addition to NASA services, Blue Moon will also offer commercial transport opportunities.

The team: Blue Origin formed a broad partnership with industry leaders, beating out Dynetics to win the contract. The Blue Origin team consists of the following:

• Lockheed Martin: builds the cislunar transporter for refueling

• Draper: constructs the GNC navigation and simulation

• Astrobotic: makes the cargo accommodations

• Honeybee Robotics: builds the cargo offloading system

• Boeing: constructs the docking systems

Battle of the billionaires: The lunar lander contract heightens the rivalry between Elon Musk and Bezos. When NASA awarded Starship the first lunar lander contract in 2021, Blue Origin protested the award, leading to a public dispute between the two CEOs. Ultimately, a federal judge overturned the Blue Origin suit—but not before Congress directed NASA to award a second lander contract to fuel competition.

Now, both billionaire-led rocket companies are responsible for providing transport to the lunar surface for NASA’s return to the Moon.

Sponsored

Meet Millennium

Millennium Space Systems is an end-to-end small satellite prime contractor, delivering full mission solutions to customers. From design, build, integration and test to mission operations and training, the team enables customers’ missions. The in-house ground software enables system operations, and the autonomy they have developed allows for near lights-out operations.

The company is a prime contractor known for designing and building high-performance small satellites in incredibly fast timelines. Its small satellite constellations work across orbits on national security, science and other missions.

Ax-2 Takes Off

The second-ever commercial astronaut mission to the ISS has embarked.

Mission recap: Right on schedule at 5:37pm ET yesterday, the Axiom Mission 2 (aka Ax-2) crew of four successfully lifted off from KSC in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9. The crew included:

• Commander Peggy Whitson, who holds the record for longest time spent in space by a woman or American

• Pilot John Shoffner

• Mission Specialist Ali AlQarni

• Mission Specialist Rayyanah Barnawi

AlQarni and Barnawi will be the first Saudi astronauts to board the ISS, and Barnawi is the first Saudi woman in space.

Axiom didn’t reveal how much Shoffner, AlQarni, and Barnawi paid for their tickets to space. For Ax-1, its first commercial astronaut flight launched in April 2021, the company charged $55M a pop.

The commercial astronaut era: Axiom is starting off launching its commercial astronaut flights to the ISS, but it’s got even bigger plans on the horizon. The company is working on building its own space station in LEO, in part through wide-reaching collaborations with NASA.

• Axiom won a $140M NASA contract in 2020 to attach a commercial habitable module to the ISS. That first habitation module, Axiom Hab 1, is currently targeting launch in 2025.

• The company is also one of the agency’s next-generation spacesuit suppliers, and recently revealed its design.

Looking ahead…As of this writing, the crew has nearly reached the station and is scheduled to dock in a few minutes, at 9:24am ET. They’ll remain on the station for 8 days, completing a jam-packed schedule of science experiments, then undock on May 30 for splashdown on the 31st, completing the 10-day mission.

In Other News

• China launched two science satellites aboard a Long March 2C.

• The country is also exploring plans to launch an exoplanet-hunting space telescope by 2035.

• Viasat ($VSAT) received FCC approval for its acquisition of Inmarsat.

• SpaceX tested its water cooled steel plate, which will be used to protect Starship’s launch pad.

• The US and Australia released a joint statement on their international collaboration, which will include building an Australia-based ground station to support Artemis.

• Terran Orbital ($LLAP) broke ground on its new 94,000-sq ft manufacturing facility.

The View from KSC

The weather played along for the Ax-2 launch from the Space Coast yesterday afternoon.