Blue Origin Announces National Team to Build Lunar Lander for NASA’s Artemis Program
WASHINGTON, DC (Blue Origin PR) — Today, Blue Origin is proud to announce a national team to offer a Human Landing System for NASA’s Artemis program to return Americans to the lunar surface by 2024.
Blue Origin has signed teaming agreements with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. These partners have decades of experience supporting NASA with human space flight systems, launch vehicles, orbital logistics, deep-space missions, interplanetary navigation and planetary landings.
Our combined experience is uniquely positioned to meet NASA’s needs for the Artemis program. Each partner will bring their industry leading solutions to the following roles:
- Blue Origin, as prime contractor, leads program management, systems engineering, safety and mission assurance, and mission engineering while providing the Descent Element that is based on the multi-year development of the Blue Moon lunar lander and its BE-7 engine.
- Lockheed Martin develops the reusable Ascent Element vehicle and leads crewed flight operations and training.
- Northrop Grumman provides the Transfer Element vehicle that brings the landing system down towards the Moon.
- Draper leads descent guidance and provides flight avionics.
“National challenges call for a national response. We are humbled and inspired to lead this deeply committed team that will land NASA astronauts on the Moon,” said Bob Smith, CEO, Blue Origin. “Combining our partners’ heritage with our advance work on the Blue Moon lunar lander and its BE-7 engine, our team is looking forward to working with NASA in support of the Artemis program.”
“Lockheed Martin has been honored to help NASA explore space for more than 50 years, providing deep space robotic missions, planetary landers, space shuttle heritage and the Orion exploration spacecraft,” said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space. “We value Blue Origin’s thoughtful approach to developing human-rated flight systems, and are thrilled to be part of a national team with this mix of innovation and experience. We look forward to safely and sustainably returning our nation to the surface of the Moon by 2024.”
“Northrop Grumman’s commitment to put Americans back on the moon dates back over 50 years ago with the delivery of the first lunar lander for the historic Apollo Program,” said Blake Larson, corporate vice president and president of Innovation Systems, Northrop Grumman. “Along with our ongoing work on the Space Launch System boosters, astronaut escape system, and the Gateway habitat, we are proud to be a part of the Blue Origin national team to support NASA’s Artemis program and the ambitious goal to return to the moon by 2024.”
“When the nation needs precision guidance, it calls on Draper,” said Kaigham J. Gabriel, President and CEO, Draper. “We guided Apollo to the moon and back nearly 50 years ago. We’re ready to do it again with the Blue Origin team for Artemis.”
It’s time to go back to the Moon, this time to stay.
11 responses to “Blue Origin Announces National Team to Build Lunar Lander for NASA’s Artemis Program”
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So sad, Blue Origin seems to be going down the same road as Orbital Sciences…
OSC has one of the most versatile vehicles flying
Not versatile enough to re-enter and land. And it’s NGIS now, not OSC – try to keep up.
Further, Cygnus’s launcher hasn’t found a market beyond hauls to ISS. With Firefly looking to gin up a reusable Beta follow-on, with Antares-or-better performance, to its soon-to-fly Alpha vehicle, NGIS could easily find itself with much cheaper competition in the “ISS trashcan” niche of CRS in the next contract competition – assuming ISS lasts beyond 2024.
I don’t get the feeling that NGIS is really committed to Antares. OSC designed and built the launcher as a Delta II replacement, and now we know why the Delta II was retired. Fortunately, they didn’t waste much money on factory space building that thing. The cores came from Ukraine and the engines from Russia. OSC developed the avionics, and their sister division, ATK supplied the second stage. And it doesn’t appear that NGIS is adverse to launching Cygnus on other launchers, such as Atlas.
Agreed. In fact, NGIS’s best bet to pre-empt a challenge from Firefly is to pull it in as a partner for Cygnus launches as soon as Beta is real and to abandon Antares at that point.
the launcher is the least important of the stack, as OCS/NGIS has many many launchers to chose from most of which are more efficient then the Antares.
“Not versatile enough to re-enter and land. And it’s NGIS now, not OSC – try to keep up.”
I dont think that the vehicle development “line” is going that direction…ie I suspect they are more interested in offshots like ferry systems etc.
But for the record they are going to try soon an reenter one using that big inflatable heat shield thing LARC is working on
As noted to Steve, above, the most reasonable alternative launcher for Cygnus would be Firefly’s reusable Beta, once it’s actually a thing.
I don’t know what direction NGIS foresees for Cygnus beyond ISS resupply – and a one-off modification to serve as the “hab” module of Gateway.
To use it as a resupply vehicle for Gateway would need a launcher with a lot more oomph than either Antares or the notional Firefly Beta. Or, perhaps distributed launch of a Cygnus and a transfer stage on a pair of Betas. Even that would require autonomous rendezvous and docking which Cygnus does not currently have.
Also not sure what Cygnus could “ferry” and between what start and end points. The Cygnus “service module” derived from one of Orbital/NGIS’s comsat buses, has the avionics capacity for quite a variety of missions, but I don’t think the same is true of its delta-V capability. Seems like it would need bigger tanks/engines to be a ferry. Or maybe, for ferry missions where time is not so pressing, a SEP makeover with some noble gas as a propellant? Maybe that would even work for Gateway resupply. There are certainly a great many things one could do besides ISS resupply with what is, in essence, a smart tin can with engines. But I think many such missions probably require additional modifications.
The inflatable heat shield thing is interesting too. Re-entry with such a thing would impose far higher G-forces on descent than for Dream Chaser or Crew/Cargo Dragon 2. There is still plenty of downmass that could stand such a trip, but the results of biology experiments involving lifeforms above the unicellular level wouldn’t be among them.
the uses of OSC/NGIS Cygnus are virtually unlimited
I don’t particularly agree, but I’m open to persuasion. Can you describe at least two such uses?
Seems a logical hook-up. Blue has proprietay lander tech the others need. The others have proprietary tech for landing sole-sourced, cost-plus government contracts that Blue seems to have decided it needs. 😀
OSC’s problem was the merger with ATK. They probably should have focused on growing their commercial satellite business instead.