Going to the moon in 2024

[Gman]

https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-pe...lander-engine/

Looks like Blue Origin has conducted a successful test firing of the engines they plan to use on their lunar lander.

Glad to see things moving forward.

Interesting to see a green flame from a LOX+LH2 engine. I wonder what that was about?

[Justin]

Was that from the engine or was that just another part of the system venting?

I assume the engine firing is the one with all of the white smoke.

[Gman]

The flame from the engine becomes almost invisible. The spray below the engine is water.

Someone else asked the same question over on Twitter. This was the response;

First firing vaporizes some of the copper liner. Copper causes the green flame.

But it appears this is the correct answer;

But in this case, it’s the ignition fluid, TEA-TEB

[Justin]

India just launched a mission that will put a vehicle in orbit around the moon, and a lander/rover combination on the south polar lunar surface.

https://spacenews.com/india-launches...ander-mission/

Super exciting.

Hausj?rvi, FINLAND — India successfully launched its Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and lunar surface spacecraft Monday, a week after the first launch attempt was scrubbed due to an issue with the launch vehicle.

A GSLV Mk 3 aunch vehicle lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota off the coast of the Bay of Bengal at 5:13 a.m. Eastern, with the event webcast live by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The mission aims to place an orbiter in a 100- by 100-kilometer lunar polar orbit and carry out a soft landing near the south pole of the moon with a lander and rover. A successful touchdown would make India the fourth country to achieve a lunar landing after the U.S., the former Soviet Union and China.

[Justin]

Looks like NASA is looking to throw some cash at three companies to get development of a lunar lander underway.

https://spacenews.com/nasa-outlines-...-partnerships/

WASHINGTON — As NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first crewed landing on the moon, the agency released new details about how it will procure landers to enable humans to return to the moon in the 2020s.

NASA released July 19 a presolicitation notice for its Human Landing System Integrated Lander effort, part of the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) program. The notice included a draft version of a broad agency announcement, with NASA requesting industry comments on it by Aug. 2.

The draft solicitation offers some new details on NASA’s approach to developing landers capable of carrying humans to the surface of the moon and back, and do so in time to meet the 2024 established by the White House earlier this year and reaffirmed by Vice President Mike Pence in a July 20 speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.

[Bailey Guns]

Putting a manned lunar rover on the moon is sooo 1970s...



Seriously, though... Is the (fairly) recent uptick in interest by various countries in launching moon missions fueled by the same reasons we did it in the 60s and 70s?

[Justin]

I would say that current lunar missions are largely driven by national desires for prestige, at least primarily for the non-American nations, e.g. China, India, and Israel. The two Chinese lunar rover missions were explicitly designed as part of an overall architecture with an eye to conducting unmanned sample return missions followed by manned lunar exploration.

However, there's still plenty of science to be done on the lunar surface, not the least of which would involve prospecting for in-situ resource utilization.

Ultimately, though, I think there are additional plans above and beyond what was accomplished with Apollo, not the least of which would be to set up permanent manned facilities to conduct additional research and experimentation. Being able to conduct off-world testing on the moon is seen as a stepping stone to eventual plans for exploring Mars.
Finally, there also seem to be a number of private corporations looking to hitch rides to the moon in order to explore possible business use cases.

[Richard K]

I can think of a number of better ways to spend 20 billion dollars!

[Justin]

I can think of a number of better ways to spend 20 billion dollars!

Yeah, Walter Mondale felt the same way about Apollo.

[TFOGGER]

$20B is enough to run the entire US government...for about 4 hours and 42 minutes.