Tag Archives: blue origin

On Tuesday, Blue Origin officials announced 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.

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.”

Via a news release, Blue Origin officials share that their “combined experience is uniquely positioned to meet NASA’s needs for the Artemis program…it’s time to go back to the Moon, this time to stay.”

On Wednesday, Telesat and regional space launch company Blue Origin announced a signed, multi-launch agreement that paves the way for the powerful New Glenn rocket to play a key role in Telesat’s deployment of its global LEO satellite constellation that will deliver fiber-like broadband services anywhere on Earth.

According to officials, Telesat’s LEO program will gain “significant cost savings and other advantages by launching with Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn.”

With this agreement, two of the most innovative and ambitious companies in the space industry are combining their expertise, capabilities, and resources to transform the global broadband and launch markets.

Telesat and Blue Origin have established a strong working relationship and will collaborate on a range of technical activities to assure cost and performance objectives are achieved throughout the multi-launch program.

Telesat’s LEO constellation will leverage the company’s innovative, patent-pending orbital architecture and global priority spectrum rights, as well as the most advanced antenna, digital processing, optical link and manufacturing technologies. Telesat LEO will offer an unsurpassed combination of capacity, speed, affordability, security and resiliency with latency equal to, or better than, the most advanced terrestrial networks.

Able to serve the entire globe, Telesat LEO will help satisfy many of the world’s most challenging communications requirements. It will accelerate 5G expansion, bridge the digital divide with fiber-like high speed services into rural and remote communities, and set new levels of performance for commercial and government connectivity on land and in key maritime and aeronautical broadband markets, which are among the fastest growing in today’s satcom industry.

Founded and backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin is developing New Glenn, a reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that will send people and payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. New Glenn’s massive 7-meter fairing has more than two times the payload volume of the largest fairing in the market today.

New Glenn is powered by 7 BE-4 engines with the capability to deliver 45 metric tons to LEO. Blue Origin expects New Glenn to have its maiden flight in 2021 from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Blue Origin is also presently launching and landing its fully reusable New Shepard suborbital vehicle taking research and technology payloads to space today and astronauts later this year.

“Blue Origin’s powerful New Glenn rocket is a disruptive force in the launch services market which, in turn, will help Telesat disrupt the economics and performance of global broadband connectivity,” said Dan Goldberg, Telesat’s President and CEO. “Telesat and Blue Origin share a vision of leveraging state-of-the-art space technologies and engineering excellence to improve the lives of people around the globe and give our respective customers a significant and sustainable advantage in their own highly competitive markets. Telesat is working with a range of world-class companies to build, deploy and operate our advanced, global LEO network. We are delighted to welcome Blue Origin and their New Glenn rocket to the team.”

“Blue Origin is honored that Telesat has selected our powerful New Glenn rocket to launch Telesat’s innovative LEO satellite constellation into space,” said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin. Adding, “We are excited to be partnering with this industry leader on their disruptive satellite network architecture. New Glenn’s 7-meter fairing, with its huge mass and volume capabilities, is a perfect match for Telesat’s constellation plans while reducing launch costs per satellite.”

About Telesat (www.telesat.com)

Monday morning, officials with Blue Origin, the regional spaceflight company with launch facilities located just north Van Horn, announced a new launch scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Blue Origin’s next New Shepard mission (NS-10) is currently targeting liftoff Tuesday, December 18 at 7:30 am.  This will be the 10^th New Shepard mission and is dedicated to bringing nine NASA-sponsored research and technology payloads into space through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program.

NASA’s Flight Opportunities program is an essential program for researchers providing access to microgravity for technology development. Blue supports NASA’s Flight Opportunities program and its role in perfecting technology for a future human presence in space.

Founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin launches their missions from Van Horn, Texas, 120 miles east of El Paso.  Make sure to follow Blue Origin on Twitter for launch day updates and, to watch the launch live, log on to their website at BlueOrigin.com

The payloads flying with us on NS-10 include:

Carthage College Space Sciences Program: The Modal Propellant Gauging experiment led by Dr. Kevin Crosby is a joint effort with the NASA Kennedy Space Center Cryogenics Laboratory. It demonstrates a way to measure fuel levels in microgravity by using sound waves.

Controlled Dynamics Inc.: The Vibration Isolation Platform (VIP) aims to separate payloads from the normally occurring vibrations experienced during spaceflight. The payload led by Dr. Scott Green allows researchers to have a clear understanding of microgravity’s effects on their research results.

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab: On its second flight with Blue, the EM Field experiment will observe and collect data on the naturally occurring electromagnetic fields both inside and outside New Shepard during the launch. Principal Investigator Dr. Todd Smith will use success of this experiment to determine how global measurements of the Earth’s electromagnetic field can be conducted in the future.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: Cooling tightly-packed electronics onboard a spacecraft can be challenging, and many solutions have not been able to undergo robust testing. Principal Investigator Franklin Robinson will test one of these solutions in his Flow Boiling in Microgap Coolers experiment.

NASA Johnson Space Center: On its third flight on New Shepard, the Suborbital Flight Experiment Monitor-2 (SFEM-2) led by Dr. Katy Hurlbert will analyze various aspects of the flight environment during New Shepard’s mission profile, measuring cabin pressure, temperature, CO2, acoustic conditions, acceleration and more. The data collected will help future researchers on New Shepard design the most effective experiments for the vehicle.

Purdue University: Dr. Steven Collicott’s payload looks at Zero-Gravity Green Propellant Management Technology, which aims to help advance the use of a safer and more environmentally friendly rocket propellant by better understanding the fuel’s behavior in microgravity.

University of Central Florida: Two teams led by Dr. Josh Colwell and Dr. Addie Dove both have planetary science payloads on NS-10. The Collisions Into Dust Experiment (COLLIDE) aims to understand how dust particles react after surface contact during exploration missions to places such as the Moon, Mars and asteroids. The Collection of Regolith Experiment (CORE) addresses the unique challenge of collecting and analyzing material samples in microgravity.

University of Florida: Dr. Rob Ferl and Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul are adapting technology designed for the ISS to suborbital uses with their experiment, Validating Telemetric Imaging Hardware for Crew-Assisted and Crew-Autonomous Biological Imaging in Suborbital Applications. By recalibrating the way data is collected, the experiment will enable more biological research on suborbital missions.