Intuitive Machines Selects SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket for Second Moon MissionJanuary 13, 2021 There are currently five awarded Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions to the lunar surface in the next three years. Intuitive Machines (IM) has two of the missions and both will be launched by SpaceX.“Signing with SpaceX for our IM-2 Polar Mission, our second scheduled lunar landing, is more than affordable quality lunar transport,” said IM President and CEO, Steve Altemus. “Launching Nova-C on a rocket with a proven record of reliability and outstanding value is an assurance to NASA and our commercial payload customers that IM is dedicated to sticking the landing in back-to-back Moon missions.”NASA awarded IM the company’s second payload delivery contract award under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, October 16, 2020. IM has packaged the CLPS payload with two other high profile NASA technology payloads into IM-2 Polar Mission.“Our Lunar Payload and Data Service (LPDS) program matures with each awarded mission to the Moon,” said Altemus. “That maturity is essential for creating a reliable and repeatable lunar landing service that brings us closer to sustained lunar exploration and development.”IM-2 Polar Mission will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than 2022.“We’re honored to launch Intuitive Machines’ important missions to the lunar surface,” said SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Sales Tom Ochinero. “These missions, in partnership with NASA, will help further the goal of extending humanity’s reach beyond Earth.”
NASA Selects Intuitive Machines to Land Water-Measuring Payload on the MoonOct 16, 2020NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines of Houston approximately $47 million to deliver a drill combined with a mass spectrometer to the Moon by December 2022 under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The delivery of the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment known as PRIME-1 will help NASA search for ice at the Moon’s South Pole and, for the first time, harvest ice from below the surface.“We continue to rapidly select vendors from our pool of CLPS vendors to land payloads on the lunar surface, which exemplifies our work to integrate the ingenuity of commercial industry into our efforts at the Moon,” said NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen. “The information we’ll gain from PRIME-1 and other science instruments and technology demonstrations we’re sending to the lunar surface will inform our Artemis missions with astronauts and help us better understand how we can build a sustainable lunar presence.”PRIME-1 will land on the Moon and drill up to 3 feet (approximately 1 meter) below the surface. It will measure with a mass spectrometer how much ice in the sample is lost to sublimation as the ice turns from a solid to a vapor in the vacuum of the lunar environment. Versions of PRIME-1’s drill and the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations, or MSolo, will also fly on VIPER, a mobile robot that also will search for ice at the lunar South Pole in 2023. NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon’s South Pole the following year.“PRIME-1 will give us tremendous insight into the resources at the Moon and how to extract them,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington. “Sending this payload to the Moon is a terrific example of our scientific and technology communities coming together with our commercial partners to develop breakthrough technologies to accomplish a range of goals on the lunar surface.”STMD’s Game Changing Development program funds PRIME-1. Honeybee Robotics of Pasadena, California, is developing the ice-mining drill. NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in partnership with INFICON of Syracuse, New York, is developing the mass spectrometer.The data from PRIME-1 will help scientists understand in-situ resources on the Moon. PRIME-1 contributes to NASA’s search for water at the Moon’s poles, supporting the agency’s plans to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon by the end of the decade. PRIME-1’s early use of the drill and MSolo helps to increase the likelihood of reliable operation of those payloads on VIPER’s mobile platform in the following year.Through the CLPS initiative, NASA taps its commercial partners to quickly land scientific instruments and technology demonstrations on the Moon with the first flights set for next year. A key part of NASA’s Artemis program, CLPS flights will support a suite of robotic lunar activities ahead of a human return to the Moon as well as throughout this decade.For more information, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/clps
Am I understanding the contract right? Is NASA really buying and launching a fueled lunar lander with a wet mass of 1.9 tons for only $47 million? That's an astonishingly low price if it includes both the price of the Falcon 9 launch and the lander itself.
Quote from: jketch on 05/10/2021 07:18 pmAm I understanding the contract right? Is NASA really buying and launching a fueled lunar lander with a wet mass of 1.9 tons for only $47 million? That's an astonishingly low price if it includes both the price of the Falcon 9 launch and the lander itself.PRIME-1 is just one of the payloads on the lander. There are other payloads that can be added.NASA is basically buying the service, kinda like how SpaceX provides a launch service versus ULA selling you a rocket.
PRIME-1 will last a week to 10 days, during which a robot will deploy a drill and mass spectrometer to harvest and preliminarily evaluate moon-ice for quality and regional heights and to determine how much of the ice is lost to a process known as sublimation, wherein the water transforms directly from solid ice into vapor, rather than first going through a liquid phase. In addition to ice, PRIME-1 will gather samples including rock samples to help date the sequence of impact events on the Moon, core tube samples to capture ancient solar wind trapped in regolith layers (unconsolidated, inorganic rocky material), and paired samples of material to characterize the presence of volatiles and to assess geotechnical differences between materials inside and outside permanent shadows. The samples will be returned to Earth and studied to characterize and document the regional geology, including the small, permanently shadowed regions. The data from the mission will help scientists understand how a mobile robot to be used on the subsequent VIPER mission can search for water at the Moon’s pole, and how much water may be available to use as NASA plans to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon by the end of the decade.
IM-2 will be the first to land on the Lunar South PoleOur baseline landing site, Shackleton Connecting Ridge, has balanced requirements for sunlight, communications with Earth, and payload science objectives. We are continuing to explore a range of options within 6° of the pole
The flagship ILO-1 mission is being developed through work of ILOA prime contractor Canadensys Aerospace Corp of Toronto, Ontario. Canadensys is working to deliver "a flight-ready low-cost optical payload for the ILO-1 mission, ruggedized for the Moon South Pole environment". Canadensys is working closely with Intuitive Machines to ensure ILO-1 development could potentially be ready for integration on the company's IM-2 mission to land at the Moon South Pole NET 2022.
This article says IM 2 is schedule for the fourth quarter of 2022.
Intuitive Machines to Deploy and Operate First Lunar Communication Satellite in 2022Communication between Earth and the Moon is a monumental 239,000-mile task, and Intuitive Machines (IM) is leading the way in pioneering this cislunar economic opportunity. IM selected a York Space Systems S-CLASS satellite with a lunar communications payload to launch on its upcoming IM-2 lunar South Pole mission scheduled for late 2022. The satellite will orbit the Moon to provide communications like a satellite that orbits Earth."Establishing the first node in a lunar communication and navigation network is the key to unlocking the next economic frontier, the cislunar economy," said IM President and CEO Steve Altemus."We are in a phenomenal position to deliver payloads to lunar orbit with each of our surface missions," said Altemus. "With an annual launch cadence, we're able to establish the first lunar communications satellite and return reliably to finish the entire network around the Moon."About IM-2: A Mission of FirstsIn addition to being the first to establish a lunar communications network, Intuitive Machines' second mission to the Moon will set the stage for future robotic exploration and pave the way for the first woman and person of color to set foot on the lunar surface. IM-2 will be the first spacecraft to ever land on the lunar South Pole. After sticking the landing, IM's spacecraft, Nova-C, will become the first to drill for lunar ice and deploy a rover to demonstrate 4G LTE communication on the lunar surface. During surface operations, IM's µNova will demonstrate extreme lunar mobility. µNova will be the first spacecraft to explore deep craters on the Moon's surface.
IM-2, also known as Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), is Nova-C’s second planned mission for the CLPS program. PRIME-1 will follow a similar prelaunch assembly and testing timeline as IM-1, but its mission will be different.Still using a Falcon 9, it will launch from LC-39A in December 2022 on a rideshare mission with a commercial communications satellite.
Any idea which commercial sat? I'm thinking ASBM.
It may just be their own satellite, as mentioned above: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=53795.msg2255444#msg2255444
