WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA has selected five U.S. companies to help the agency enable a steady pace of crewed trips to the lunar surface under the agency’s Artemis program. These companies will make advancements toward sustainable human landing system concepts, conduct risk-reduction activities, and provide feedback on NASA’s requirements to cultivate industry capabilities for crewed lunar landing missions.

By Margo Pierce
NASA’s Spinoff Publication

Moon dust isn’t like the stuff that collects on a bookshelf or on tables – it’s ubiquitous and abrasive, and it clings to everything. It’s so bad that it even broke the vacuum NASA designed to clean the Moon dust off Apollo spacesuits.

With NASA’s return to the Moon and its orbit, it will need to manage the dust, which is dangerous for people too. The first step is knowing how much is around at any given time. Efforts to do just that are already paying off on Earth, in the fight against air pollution.

Lunar and Planetary Institute Announcement

In 2024, NASA will launch the Artemis III mission to the Moon’s South Pole, the first human mission to the surface of the Moon in the 21st century. In preparation for this historic mission, NASA is now planning the science activities to be executed by the crew of two. The Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is forming a Science Definition Team (SDT) that will pull from existing community documents (the LEAG Roadmap, Decadal surveys, SCEM report, ASM report) to develop the detailed science objectives to achieve the science goals that have already been released by the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) in the Artemis Science Plan.

SPARKS, Nev., August 10, 2020 (Sierra Nevada PR) — Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the global aerospace and national security company owned by Eren and Fatih Ozmen, is continuing to advance its development of the company’s LIFE™ Habitat (Large Inflatable Fabric Environment) under Phase 3 of NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) Appendix A habitat program.

In Phase 3, NASA has asked companies to focus on habitat design concepts that could be used on the lunar surface or as a Mars transportation habitat to test at the Gateway.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (NASA PR) — NASA and 11 commercial partners recently completed a series of technical studies, demonstrations and ground prototypes for 21st Century human landing systems. The Next Space Technology Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Appendix E work helped the agency refine its Artemis program requirements for the companies competing to build the landers that will take American astronauts to the Moon throughout this decade.

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA has finalized the contract for the initial crew module of the agency’s Gateway lunar orbiting outpost.

Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Space, has been awarded $187 million to design the habitation and logistics outpost (HALO) for the Gateway, which is part of NASA’s Artemis program and will help the agency build a sustainable presence at the Moon. This award funds HALO’s design through its preliminary design review, expected by the end of 2020.

WEBSTER, Texas USA and HALIFAX, NS, Canada – A new generation radio-frequency (RF) Power Processing Unit (PPU) for the VASIMR engine, built by Aethera Technologies Ltd. of Canada, has completed a series of full power acceptance tests at Ad Astra Rocket Company’s Texas facility near Houston. The unit completed these tests on August 12 by operating in a thermal steady-state with no anomalies at its full power rating of 120 kW.

The RF PPU is now ready to be incorporated into Ad Astra’s vacuum facility so that it can be tested with the VX- 200SS VASIMR prototype. These tests are part of Ad Astra’s ongoing program under the NASA NextSTEP partnership contract.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

NASA has awarded Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS) a contract of an undisclosed amount to modify its Cygnus space station resupply vehicle to serve as the minimal habitation module (MHM) for the Lunar Gateway.

Northrop Grumman won out over four competitors that had won contracts to develop mockup habitats under the space agency’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-2 (NextSTEP-2) program.

Read Synopsis NASA intends to release Appendix K to the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) entitled “Appendix K: Commercial Destination Development in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Free Flyer.” This appendix will request proposals from United States (U.S.) commercial entities to enter into a public-private partnership to develop and demonstrate commercial destination technologies and markets in LEO. The primary objectives of Appendix K to the […]

TUCSON , June 27, 2019 (Paragon PR) – Paragon Space Development Corporation (Paragon), and its partner Giner Inc., are proud to announce that they are now under contract for the development and testing of the ISRU-derived water purification and Hydrogen Oxygen Production (IHOP), a patent-pending subsystem and advancement of the subsystem architecture as part of NASA’s NextSTEP BAA Program.

IHOP is a game changing technology that enables an enduring human presence on the moon and beyond. The IHOP system purifies naturally occurring deposits of water and generates oxygen and hydrogen at commercially competitive scales. Once delivered to the moon, IHOP will provide the water and oxygen needed for a continuous human presence on the moon, and the low cost propellant needed to explore the solar system.

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