Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLPS)

[John44]

NASA Administrator to Announce New Moon to Mars Partnerships with U.S. Companies
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6636

[TrevorMonty]

No Blue Origin.
Hmmm....

They noted these are only capability and services contracts- each company will be responsible for securing their own launch vehicle to actually get to the moon.  If Blue Origin, SpaceX, ULA, Arianespace, etc are all options to get to the moon for the commercial services providers, there will likely be a fair amount of competition to get the launch contracts.

They have to use domestic launch vehicles and domestic spacecraft. Right now they can use SpaceX, ULA, NGIS, and RocketLab. Soon Virgin and Blue as well.

You can add Firefly to that list. At 1000kg to LEO or 600kg to GEO (???kg to LLO) its one of more capable small LV and big enough for few of these landers.

Relativity LV will be 1200kg LEO.

Moon Express can deliver some useful payloads to surface with LauncherOne, either using MX1 or 2 stage MX2.

So lots of choices for smaller landers when it comes to dedicated launch on small LV.

[TrevorMonty]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

I was thinking that Orbit Beyond was the odd man out. Can't find their website. Do they have one?

edit: Their address is listed as Edison, New Jersey. Sort of small town - population of about 100,000. Shouldn't be hard to find their office?

edit 2: Their one known employee, Jeff Patton (impressive resume btw), doesn't list Orbit Beyond on linkedIn and is listed as living in the Denver area. Anybody know if he still works at ULA and this is just a part time gig or what?

"
OrbitBeyond has engaged TeamIndus for Lander engineering, Honeybee Robotics for payload integration, Advanced Space for mission management, Ceres Robotics for surface operations, and Apollo Fusion for future programs."

TeamIndus is real player here, OrbitBeyond is probably way to bring them into a domestic competition.

Japan's iSpace are also involved as partners with Draper.

Lots of strategic partnerships going on, which is good thing.  Newspace companies with no flight history partnering with well established aerospace  companies. As example Moon Express on their own would be risking but with SNC's vast experience I'd give them better than 90% chance of successful first landing.

[Phil Stooke]

website:

https://www.orbitbeyond.com/

[ncb1397]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

I was thinking that Orbit Beyond was the odd man out. Can't find their website. Do they have one?

edit: Their address is listed as Edison, New Jersey. Sort of small town - population of about 100,000. Shouldn't be hard to find their office?

edit 2: Their one known employee, Jeff Patton (impressive resume btw), doesn't list Orbit Beyond on linkedIn and is listed as living in the Denver area. Anybody know if he still works at ULA and this is just a part time gig or what?

"
OrbitBeyond has engaged TeamIndus for Lander engineering, Honeybee Robotics for payload integration, Advanced Space for mission management, Ceres Robotics for surface operations, and Apollo Fusion for future programs."

TeamIndus is real player here, OrbitBeyond is probably way to bring them into a domestic competition.

Japan's iSpace are also involved as partners with Draper.

Lots of strategic partnerships going on, which is good thing.  Newspace companies with no flight history partnering with well established aerospace  companies. As example Moon Express on their own would be risking but with SNC's vast experience I'd give them better than 90% chance of successful first landing.

Yeah, I saw that part about being partners with Team Indus and co. But you would think that companies have to have more substantial U.S. operations and not just be a shell company. When a company gets listed as awarded a piece of a $2.6 billion program, and as far as I can tell, they don't even exist, it raises red flags. Seriously, the closest thing that comes up on the New Jersey government business registry is Orbitra in Edison New Jersey.

edit: Linked in page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbitbeyond
lists two employees in New York and California. So, the company is pretty spread out. And Jeff Patton seems to have left ULA based on their press release, so that makes 3. Two is company, three is a crowd I guess.

The Engineering team at OrbitBeyond is led by Jeff Patton, former Development Program
Systems Engineering and Integration Manager at ULA.

https://www.orbitbeyond.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20181112-OBI-Press-Release-Final.pdf

[QuantumG]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

Stand-in for RocketLab maybe?

[Markstark]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

Stand-in for RocketLab maybe?

I believe the companies in the list are lander providers who of course will have to partner with a launch vehicle provider. I’m not aware of Rocket Lab working on any lunar landers. However, I thought Firefly was only working on a small launch vehicle. I’m not familiar with any lander work from them.

[Craftyatom]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

Stand-in for RocketLab maybe?

I believe the companies in the list are lander providers who of course will have to partner with a launch vehicle provider. I’m not aware of Rocket Lab working on any lunar landers. However, I thought Firefly was only working on a small launch vehicle. I’m not familiar with any lander work from them.

The picture NASA posted of Firefly's proposal is a Beta vehicle with an extra stage and an attached lander.  We haven't heard any details about that - I thought they'd be contributing the SEP stage they've been talking about - but apparently they've at least drawn it up (I think this lander design is different from any of the others we've seen, but I'm not entirely sure).  I have a feeling they're planning to use this contract to fund the Beta LV's development, by pitching themselves as an "all-up" solution.

[Markstark]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

Stand-in for RocketLab maybe?

I believe the companies in the list are lander providers who of course will have to partner with a launch vehicle provider. I’m not aware of Rocket Lab working on any lunar landers. However, I thought Firefly was only working on a small launch vehicle. I’m not familiar with any lander work from them.

The picture NASA posted of Firefly's proposal is a Beta vehicle with an extra stage and an attached lander.  We haven't heard any details about that - I thought they'd be contributing the SEP stage they've been talking about - but apparently they've at least drawn it up (I think this lander design is different from any of the others we've seen, but I'm not entirely sure).  I have a feeling they're planning to use this contract to fund the Beta LV's development, by pitching themselves as an "all-up" solution.

Very cool. Had not seen that configuration before. Thank you !

[TrevorMonty]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

Stand-in for RocketLab maybe?

I believe the companies in the list are lander providers who of course will have to partner with a launch vehicle provider. I’m not aware of Rocket Lab working on any lunar landers. However, I thought Firefly was only working on a small launch vehicle. I’m not familiar with any lander work from them.

The picture NASA posted of Firefly's proposal is a Beta vehicle with an extra stage and an attached lander.  We haven't heard any details about that - I thought they'd be contributing the SEP stage they've been talking about - but apparently they've at least drawn it up (I think this lander design is different from any of the others we've seen, but I'm not entirely sure).  I have a feeling they're planning to use this contract to fund the Beta LV's development, by pitching themselves as an "all-up" solution.

Earth departure stage isn't SEP, looks more like a Alpha US.

A rough calculation using this combination is 400-500kg to surface, thats lander mass+ payload.

[theinternetftw]

From the announcement video, a bit about the selection process:

Thomas Zurbuchen: So frankly what we tried to do on this one is go relatively broad. It makes no sense to us to go select out based on some criteria that we may come up with using our own development cycles to cut down the competition. We believe what should decide on the success and on the viability of each one of those partners should be how they deliver these services that we want. So we went with a really broad set of criteria that really asked questions about their overall viability as companies, their likelihood to be able to deliver these services, but we did not go into really deep depth relative to the technical capability. Because frankly, that's going to come next. When we're going to talk about the very tasks that are going to come our way.

[Craftyatom]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

Stand-in for RocketLab maybe?

I believe the companies in the list are lander providers who of course will have to partner with a launch vehicle provider. I’m not aware of Rocket Lab working on any lunar landers. However, I thought Firefly was only working on a small launch vehicle. I’m not familiar with any lander work from them.

The picture NASA posted of Firefly's proposal is a Beta vehicle with an extra stage and an attached lander.  We haven't heard any details about that - I thought they'd be contributing the SEP stage they've been talking about - but apparently they've at least drawn it up (I think this lander design is different from any of the others we've seen, but I'm not entirely sure).  I have a feeling they're planning to use this contract to fund the Beta LV's development, by pitching themselves as an "all-up" solution.

Earth departure stage isn't SEP, looks more like a Alpha US.

A rough calculation using this combination is 400-500kg to surface, thats lander mass+ payload.

Agreed, that stage looks liquid, and using an Alpha second stage would (I assume) be much cheaper than a purpose-designed departure stage.  As a launch vehicle, it looks great.  As for the lander, I should've dug deeper.  From Firefly's website:

In conjunction with our Beta launch vehicle and our partnership with Intuitive Machines, Firefly will provide an integrated lunar services offering, from the launch pad to the surface of the Moon.

I would assume that Firefly is doing the integration, launch, and transfer burn, then handing off to Intuitive for the coast, landing, and operations, since those are the areas the respective companies are known for.

[Markstark]

Masten Space Systems
Astrobotic
Lockheed Martin
Moon Express
Deep Space Systems
Firefly
Draper / iSpace
Intuitive Machines
Orbit Beyond

One of these is not like the other. Why was an aerospace giant included?

Stand-in for RocketLab maybe?

I believe the companies in the list are lander providers who of course will have to partner with a launch vehicle provider. I’m not aware of Rocket Lab working on any lunar landers. However, I thought Firefly was only working on a small launch vehicle. I’m not familiar with any lander work from them.

The picture NASA posted of Firefly's proposal is a Beta vehicle with an extra stage and an attached lander.  We haven't heard any details about that - I thought they'd be contributing the SEP stage they've been talking about - but apparently they've at least drawn it up (I think this lander design is different from any of the others we've seen, but I'm not entirely sure).  I have a feeling they're planning to use this contract to fund the Beta LV's development, by pitching themselves as an "all-up" solution.

Earth departure stage isn't SEP, looks more like a Alpha US.

A rough calculation using this combination is 400-500kg to surface, thats lander mass+ payload.

Agreed, that stage looks liquid, and using an Alpha second stage would (I assume) be much cheaper than a purpose-designed departure stage.  As a launch vehicle, it looks great.  As for the lander, I should've dug deeper.  From Firefly's website:

In conjunction with our Beta launch vehicle and our partnership with Intuitive Machines, Firefly will provide an integrated lunar services offering, from the launch pad to the surface of the Moon.

I would assume that Firefly is doing the integration, launch, and transfer burn, then handing off to Intuitive for the coast, landing, and operations, since those are the areas the respective companies are known for.

I kinda see it

[theinternetftw]

Nine winners. Seven landers.

Masten Space Systems - Developing the XL-1 Lander
Astrobotic - Developing the Peregrine Lander
Lockheed Martin - Developing the McCandless Lander (Phoenix / InSight based)
Moon Express - Developing the MX-1 Lander (presumably, but the "concept image" in NASA's gallery is the MX-9).
Intuitive Machines - Developing the Nova-C Lander (Project Morpheus based)
Deep Space Systems - Developing a Rover, using Intuitive Machines to land
Firefly - Selling Lunar Delivery Services, launching with its own Launch Vehicle and using Intuitive Machines to land
Draper / iSpace - Developing the Artemis-7 Lander
Orbit Beyond / TeamIndus - Developing the Z-01 Lander (unsure if Z-01 is the lander name, the mission, or both)

[jacqmans]

News Release Issued: Nov 29, 2018 (2:23pm EST)


Lockheed Martin Selected for NASA's Commercial Lunar Lander Payload Services Contract

Only Company to Build Four Successful Mars Landers will Offer Commercial Lunar Payload Deliveries


DENVER, Nov. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) will apply its expertise in interplanetary spacecraft to a new program designed to deliver commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon. NASA announced today they have selected Lockheed Martin's McCandless Lunar Lander to provide payload delivery services as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract.

Lockheed Martin's lander design builds on four decades of experience engineering deep space missions, including Mars landers. The McCandless Lunar Lander is based on the proven design of the InSight lander – which just touched down on the Martian surface on Monday, Nov. 26 – and the Phoenix lander – which successfully arrived at Mars in May 2008.

"We are excited to leverage our interplanetary lander designs and experience to help NASA build a new economy on and around the Moon, and beyond," said Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager for Commercial Civil Space at Lockheed Martin. "Lockheed Martin has built more interplanetary spacecraft than all other U.S. companies combined, including four successful Mars landers. With our expertise on Orion and the NextSTEP lunar habitat, we can maximize the value of CLPS for lunar science operations as well as the path forward to tomorrow's reusable human lander."

The McCandless Lunar Lander is capable of transporting large payloads weighing hundreds of kilograms – including stationary scientific instruments, deployable rovers, or even sample return vehicles – to the surface of the Moon. The lander uses a proven propulsive landing approach that relies upon on-board radars and a set of rocket thrusters firing 10 times a second to slow to just five mph before touching down. Once on the lunar surface, the lander can provide power, communications and thermal management for sophisticated payloads.

"We're no stranger to commercial space business models, having built more than 100 commercial satellites and launched numerous Atlas and Titan commercial payloads," said Callahan. "On our last 10 interplanetary missions for NASA, we delivered on or ahead of schedule, and on budget. We want to assure payload customers who select Lockheed Martin can be confident that we'll deliver on-time and on-budget."

The McCandless Lunar Lander is named in honor of the late Bruce McCandless, a NASA astronaut and longtime Lockheed Martin employee who was a pioneer in space exploration. McCandless is best known for conducting the first ever untethered spacewalk using the Lockheed Martin-built Manned Maneuvering Unit during a flight on the space shuttle. He originally joined the astronaut corps during the Apollo program and served as the voice of mission control for Neil Armstrong's famous moonwalk. After retiring from NASA he was instrumental in the design of exploration technology and training the next generation of planetary explorers during his tenure at Lockheed Martin.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

[Steven Pietrobon]

Images of the eight landers and rover.

[theinternetftw]

Images of the eight landers and rover.

For anyone who might have missed it, there are seven landers.  Both Firefly and Deep Space Systems use the Intuitive Machines lander.  That shot Firefly submitted to NASA for release is just a low-res version of that lander with some black solid rectangles grafted on to the sides, perhaps to signify payloads.

[theinternetftw]

Lets break down the seven landers.

Astrobotic (Peregrine Lander)
   - Based their CDR timeline, they could be ~22-29 months from launch
   - Only one to share potential pricing: $1.2M/kg payload
   - 265kg nominal payload (less on the first mission)
   - Has a user guide out: https://www.astrobotic.com/payload-user-guide
   - Does its own TLI from either GTO, or perhaps some kind of special super-GTO (hard to tell)
   - Five 667N Frontier Aerospace Main Engines using MMH/MON-25
   - Twelve 45N ACS Engines that also use MMH/MON-25

Draper / iSpace (Artemis-7)
   - Before CLPS announcment, plan was for an orbital mission in 2020, landing in 2021
   - Now, "The Artemis-7 design will fly multiple times before its first CLPS mission"
   - Those two statements might not conflict if by "fly multiple times" they mean fly twice, land once
   - Japanese lander design
   - Has received "substantial private funding" - $94.5M Series A in Japan
   - 10kg payload for first orbital mission (PDR complete)
   - 30kg payload for first landed mission

Intuitive Machines (Nova-C)
   - Planning for a July 2021 launch date
   - Based on the NASA Project Morpheus lander, company started by Morpheus folks
   - Methalox propulsion
   - "At least" 85kg payload capacity
   - Does its own TLI from what looks like GTO
   - Can relocate via hops
   - Despite Firefly connection, has a video where it is being launched by a falcon-looking rocket

Lockheed Martin (McCandless Lunar Lander)
   - Based on Phoenix/InSight landers
   - Hydrazine monoprop - InSight used Aerojet Rocketdyne MR-107N landing thrusters
   - Probably can learn a lot from InSight pages like this: http://spaceflight101.com/insight/insight-spacecraft/
   - 100kg payload (reported to Jeff Foust)
   - Compare that with "large payloads weighing hundreds of kilograms" (from press release)

Masten (XL-1)
   - Planning for a 2021 launch date
   - 100kg payload - two 50kg "saddlebags"
   - relies on the LV to perform TLI
   - 4 main Masten Machete engines using their own MXP-351 non-toxic storable hypergolic bi-propellant
   - Masten has developed and flown 5 landers, collectively completing over 600 vertical landings
   - Currently integrating and nearing testing of XL-1T, the terrestrial demonstrator for XL-1
   - XL-1T planned to fly in 2019

Moon Express (MX-1, but they put the more advanced MX-9 in the concept graphic they submitted to NASA)
   - Planning for a 2020 launch date
   - 30kg payload (assuming MX-1)
    - Only information released upon winning is the 2020 date and a set of partners
   - Those partners: NanoRacks, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Paragon Space Dev Corp, Odyssey Space Research
   - Has not talked about mission or vehicle specifics as of late

Orbit Beyond / TeamIndus (HHK-1 for 'Hum Honge Kamyaab', 'We Shall Overcome', unless they've changed the name)
   - Planning for a 2020 launch date
   - Indian lander design
   - One 440N Hydrazine/N2O4 Main Engine - A non-throttlable engine that will be pulsed
   - Sixteen 22N ACS engines
   - More great propulsion info here
   - 50kg payload on first mission
   - 500kg payload on future missions
   - Future missions will have robotic arm

[QuantumG]

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1068619723280134144