Joel Kearns, SMD Dep Assoc Admin for Expl, shows this chart to PAC re CLPS status. 8 CLPS missions + 3 selected science instruments. NASA doesn't think Masten will deliver so really only 7 active missions. Those instruments will be put on future missions.
Kearns says NASA surprised by Masten's financial situation. Will do addl financial reviews before future selections, but hard to get independent financial info on small privately held companies like many of 13 CLPS providers. NASA now more "rigorous and invasive" asking for data.
Given the lack of atmosphere on the Moon, a traditional propeller driven drone will not work. Under @NASA Tipping Point initiative, we developed a propulsive drone that can land, deploy, hop, and even carry small payloads.
micro nova(µNova)We meet the demands of science and technology by providing extreme lunar mobility with µNova (Micro Nova) Hopper. µNova is a propulsive drone that deploys off of a Nova-C lander and hops across the lunar surface on our IM-2 mission. The µNova Hopper can accommodate up to 1 kg of science payloads and expand the exploration footprint to 25 km from the initial landing location. µNova can also hop into and out of permanently shaded regions (PSR), providing a first look into undiscovered areas that may provide the critical science needed to sustain a human presence on the Moon.
After several delays, is 2023 the year when CLPS missions finally land on the moon? NASASpaceflight's Justin Davenport (@Bubbinski) wraps up the latest from Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and more:
Intuitive Machines moves landing site of first mission to lunar south pole:https://spacenews.com/intuitive-machines-moves-landing-site-of-first-mission-to-lunar-south-pole/Quote from: Space NewsThe announcement did not disclose a specific landing site, but company spokesperson Josh Marshall told SpaceNews that the new landing site is at Malapert A, a crater near the south pole previously identified as a potential landing site for lunar expeditions. He confirmed that NASA requested the change in the landing site.[...]Marshall said that NASA is increasing the value of the CLPS task order to accommodate the change, but deferred questions about the revised dollar value to NASA.[...]The company announcement also stated that the landing is now planned for late June.https://twitter.com/SpaceNews_Inc/status/1622941971223306241
The announcement did not disclose a specific landing site, but company spokesperson Josh Marshall told SpaceNews that the new landing site is at Malapert A, a crater near the south pole previously identified as a potential landing site for lunar expeditions. He confirmed that NASA requested the change in the landing site.[...]Marshall said that NASA is increasing the value of the CLPS task order to accommodate the change, but deferred questions about the revised dollar value to NASA.[...]The company announcement also stated that the landing is now planned for late June.
At PAC, Joel Kearns gives an update on the CLPS missions skld for this yr. Astrobotic's launch window is May 4-10 on ULA's Vulcan. Intuitive Machines' (on SpX) first one in June and assuming that goes well, second one around Thanksgiving. So 3 this year under current plan.
Mar 14, 2023RELEASE 23-026NASA Picks Firefly Aerospace for Robotic Delivery to Far Side of MoonTo carry multiple payloads to the far side of the Moon including a satellite to orbit that area, NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas. The commercial lander will deliver two agency payloads, as well as communication and data relay satellite for lunar orbit, which is an ESA (European Space Agency) collaboration with NASA.The contract award, for just under $112 million, is a commercial lunar delivery targeted to launch in 2026 through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative, and part of the agency’s Artemis program.This delivery targets a landing site on the far side of the Moon for the two payloads, a place that permanently faces away from Earth. Scientists consider this one of the best locations in the solar system for making radio observations shielded from the noise generated by our home planet. The sensitive observations need to take place during the fourteen earth-day long lunar night.One of these payloads delivered to the lunar surface aims to take advantage of this radio-quiet zone to make low-frequency astrophysics measurements of the cosmos – focusing on a time known as the “Dark Ages,” a cosmic era that began some 370,000 years after the Big Bang and lasted until the first stars and galaxies formed. Since there is no line of sight and no direct communication with Earth from the far side of the Moon, Firefly also is required to provide communication services.“NASA continues to look at ways to learn more about our universe,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Going to the lunar far side will help scientists understand some of the fundamental physics processes that occurred during the early evolution of the universe.”Firefly is responsible for end-to-end delivery services, including payload integration, delivery from Earth to the surface and orbit of the Moon, and NASA payload operations for the first lunar day. This is the second award to Firefly under the CLPS initiative. This award is the ninth surface delivery task award issued to a CLPS vendor, and the second to the far side.“We look forward to Firefly providing this CLPS delivery,” said Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “This lunar landing should enable new scientific discoveries from the far side of the Moon during the lunar night. This particular group of payloads should not only generate new science but should be a pathfinder for future investigations exploiting this unique vantage point in our solar system.”The three payloads slated for delivery are expected to weigh in total about 1,090 pounds (494.5 kilograms). These payloads are:Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night): A pathfinder to understand the Moon’s radio environment and to potentially take a first look at a previously unobserved era in our cosmic history. It will use deployable antennas and radio receivers to observe sensitive radio waves from the Dark Ages for the first time. LuSEE-Night, is a collaboration between the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley, Space Science Laboratory, and NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. It is managed for NASA by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.Lunar Pathfinder: A communications and data relay satellite that will provide communication services to lunar missions via S-band and UHF links to lunar assets on the surface and in orbit around the Moon and an X-band link to Earth. ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder is designed and developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited. ESA collaborated with NASA for delivery through the CLPS initiative.User Terminal (UT): This payload will institute a new standard for S-Band Proximity-1 space communication protocol and establish space heritage. It will be used to commission the Lunar Pathfinder and ensure its readiness to provide communications service to LuSEE-Night. It consists of software-defined radio, an antenna, a network switch, and a sample data source. UT is in development by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.Commercial deliveries to the lunar surface with several providers continue to be part of NASA’s exploration efforts. Future CLPS deliveries could include more science experiments and technology demonstrations that further support the agency’s Artemis program.Learn more about CLPS at:http://www.nasa.gov/CLPS-end-
Rendering of Firefly’s Blue Ghost transfer vehicle deploying the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite to lunar orbit. ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder is designed and developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited. ESA collaborated with NASA for delivery through the CLPS initiative.Credits: Firefly Aerospace
At National Academies Space Sci Week, Joel Kearns says NASA expects to be notified by Dept of Justice that Masten and its successor organizations (eg Astrobotic) will not be able to fulfill its CLPS contract. If so, will remanifest those exp on future CLPS probably beyond 2026.
Quote from: Marcia SmithAt National Academies Space Sci Week, Joel Kearns says NASA expects to be notified by Dept of Justice that Masten and its successor organizations (eg Astrobotic) will not be able to fulfill its CLPS contract. If so, will remanifest those exp on future CLPS probably beyond 2026.https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1641090108555132928https://vimeo.com/event/2973318
Chris Culbert, NASA's manager of Commercial Lunar Payload Services, offers the following dates:Astrobotic: Ready to ship to the Cape whenever ULA is readyIntuitive Machines: Ready to ship to Florida (Falcon 9) in JuneFirefly: Working toward a Spring 2024 launch
Culbert says CLPS is willing to take risks because there are not humans on board and the costs are low. The agency has 10 CLPS missions to the Moon on contract for the cost of about 1.5 traditional science missions to the Moon, he said.
Like a lot of other entrepreneurs in this business, they seem to have assumed that commercial customers would appear in numbers sufficient to pay the bills. We did hear at one point that a major commercial partner had backed out before Masten failed.
But when I look at the commercial payloads on some of these missions I am struck by the limited funding they would bring to the table. Case in point, the 'space burial' companies Celestis and Elysium. There may be a demand for these services but there can't be much money in it, certainly not the 10s of millions needed. Similarly for various 'archives' and similar payloads. So it seems to me that the best customers are likely to be other national space agencies - like UAE with its Rashid rover, Canada with its new rover, maybe Mexico with its COLMENA payload on Astrobotic's first flight. There are a few other countries getting interested in new lunar projects, like Australia, so I think this is where we may see most serious funding in future.
A couple of slides providing an update on CLPS (at 17 minutes of the video):https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=55813.msg2510435#msg2510435https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=55813.msg2510435#msg2510435
Aug 2, 2023NASA’s Trio of Mini Rovers Will Team up to Explore the MoonWorking together without direct human input, three rovers each the size of a carry-on bag will map the lunar surface in 3D, using cameras and ground-penetrating radar.NASA is sending a trio of miniature rovers to the Moon to see how well they can cooperate with one another without direct input from mission controllers back on Earth. A teamwork-minded experiment to demonstrate new technology, the CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) project marks another step the agency is taking toward developing robots that, by operating autonomously, can boost the efficiency of future missions. And, by taking simultaneous measurements from multiple locations, the rovers are meant to show how multirobot missions could potentially enable new science or support astronauts.Currently slated to arrive aboard a lander in 2024 as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, CADRE’s three small rovers will be lowered onto the Reiner Gamma region of the Moon via tethers. Each about the size of a carry-on suitcase, the four-wheeled rovers will drive to find a sunbathing spot, where they’ll open their solar panels and charge up. Then they’ll spend a full lunar day – about 14 Earth days – conducting experiments designed to test their capabilities.“Our mission is to demonstrate that a network of mobile robots can cooperate to accomplish a task without human intervention – autonomously,” said Subha Comandur, the CADRE project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It could change how we do exploration in the future. The question for future missions will become: ‘How many rovers do we send, and what will they do together?’”Mission controllers on Earth will send a broad directive to the rovers’ base station aboard the 13-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) lander. Then the team of little robots will elect a “leader,” which in turn will distribute work assignments to accomplish the collective goal. Each rover will figure out how best to safely complete its assigned task.“The only instruction is, for example, ‘Go explore this region,’ and the rovers figure out everything else: when they’ll do the driving, what path they’ll take, how they’ll maneuver around local hazards,” said JPL’s Jean-Pierre de la Croix, CADRE’s principal investigator. “You only tell them the high-level goal, and they have to determine how to accomplish it.”Experiments in TeamworkThe rovers will face several tests – all within view of a monitoring camera on the base station atop the lander. The first is to drive in formation and stay on course using ultra-wideband radios to maintain their relative positions while relying on sensors to avoid obstacles. In a second experiment, the rovers will each take a path of their own choosing to explore a designated area of about 4,300 square feet (400 square meters), creating a topographic 3D map with stereo cameras. The project will also assess how well the team would adapt if a rover stopped working for some reason. Success will indicate that multirobot missions are a good choice for exploring hazardous but scientifically rewarding terrain.And while CADRE isn’t focused on conducting science, the rovers will be packing multistatic ground-penetrating radars. Driving in formation, each rover will receive the reflection of radio signals sent by the others, creating a 3D image of the structure of the subsurface as much as 33 feet (10 meters) below. Together they can gather more complete data than can current state-of-the-art ground-penetrating radars like the one on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, RIMFAX (Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment).“We’ll see how multiple robots working together – doing multiple measurements in different places at the same time – can record data that would be impossible for a single robot to achieve,” Comandur said. “It could be a game-changing way of doing science.”Working SmartBut there’s more to CADRE than testing autonomy and teamwork capabilities: The rovers also need to survive the harsh thermal environment near the Moon’s equator, which poses a challenge for such small robots. In the searing sunlight, the rovers could face midday temperatures of up to 237 degrees Fahrenheit (114 Celsius). Made with a combination of commercial off-the-shelf parts and custom-built components, the rovers must be robust enough to make it through the daytime heat while being compact and lightweight.At the same time, they need to have the computing power to run the JPL-developed cooperative autonomy software. It’s a difficult balance: The project’s rovers and base station get their brain power from a small processing chip (the next generation of the cellphone-class processor inside NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter), but using the processor contributes to the heat.To prevent the rovers from cooking, the CADRE team came up with a creative solution: 30-minute wake-sleep cycles. Every half-hour, the rovers will shut down, cooling off via radiators and recharging their batteries. When they simultaneously awaken, they’ll share their health status with one another via a mesh radio network (much like a home Wi-Fi network) and once again elect a leader based on which is fittest for the task at hand. Then off they’ll go for another round of lunar exploration.More About the ProjectJPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages CADRE for the Game Changing Development program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. The technology demonstration will launch as a payload on the third lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-3, under the CLPS initiative, which is managed by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, also in Washington. The agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and its Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, have both supported the project. Motiv Space Systems designed and built key hardware elements at the company’s Pasadena, California, facility. Clemson University in South Carolina contributed research in support of the project.For further details about CADRE, go to:https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cadreMelissa PamerJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.626-314-4928[email protected]2023-107Last Updated: Aug 3, 2023Editor: Naomi HartonoTags: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Robotics
A model rover drives over a rock during a test for NASA’s CADRE project in JPL’s Mars Yard in June. Bound for the Moon, the technology demonstration will show the potential for cooperative, autonomous exploration by a team of three small solar-powered rovers.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A pair of plastic prototypes of the CADRE rovers demonstrate driving in formation during a test at JPL last year. Seven of these “Mercury 7” prototypes were built, each named for one of NASA’s seven Mercury Project astronauts. John (for John Glenn) and Scott (for Scott Carpenter) are shown here.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Engineer Kristopher Sherrill observes a development model rover during a test for NASA’s CADRE technology demonstration in JPL’s Mars Yard in June. The team tested a new wheel design, surface navigation software, and mobility capabilities, among other aspects of the project.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A CADRE test rover appears to catch the attention of the much larger engineering model of NASA’s Perseverance rover, called OPTIMISM, at JPL’s Mars Yard. CADRE will demonstrate how multirobot missions can record data impossible for a single robot to achieve – a tantalizing prospect for future missions.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
After years of development, the first commercial landers developed as part of a NASA program are finally ready for launch. A report on the progress of those landers and whether they can beat the odds. buff.ly/3FlBMdS
Commercial lunar landers prepare for liftoffby Jeff FoustMonday, October 16, 2023
