Blue Origin now has a golden opportunity to advance Spacex on trips to the moon. And he is taking advantage of it

The Lunar exploration panorama has changed with the new US administration. Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos space company, is strategically positioning to capitalize on the recent turbulence of the NASA Artemis program.

Short. With Boeing and Lockheed Martin outside the future lunar missions after the Cancellation of the SLS Rocket and the Orion shiptwo companies are the clear favorite to reconfigure the NASA Artemis program.

Although Spacex has led the commercial narrative so far, its focus centered on Mars and the Technological developments of competition They could offer Blue originated a window to, if not advance, at least equate forces in the race towards our natural satellite.

First flight this year. John Couluris, the leader of Blue Origin’s lunar efforts, has revealed New details about architecture and The road map From the company’s missions to the moon.

In a presentation of the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative Conference, Couluris said Blue Origin planned to do A demonstration flight without crew from its lunar module Blue Moon Mark I to the South Pole of the Moon before the end of the year.

Blue Moon Mark I. Blue Origin’s first lunar module was designed to launch aboard the new Glenn rocket. Driven by a single be-7 engine of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, can transport up to 3.9 tons of load anywhere in the lunar surface with a precision in the alun of less than 100 meters, according to Blue Origin.

The Mark I will not only serve as a test bench for technologies of the future Blue Moon Mark II ship, Yes with the ability to carry astronautsbut it will transport commercial and NASA useful charges to the Moon, including an experiment to measure the impact of the BE-7 engine on the lunar surface.

Blue Moon Mark II. Blue’s true bet for dominating trips to the Moon is its Blue Moon Mark II, capable of taking four astronauts or between 20 and 30 tons of load to the Moon, depending on whether it is the reusable or disposable version.

Here the newly announced Cislunar Transporter comes into play, a key piece that improves Blue Origin’s strategy with that of Spacex and its gigantic Starship ship. This vehicle, also driven by BE-7 engines, is designed to transport up to 100 tons of load from the low terrestrial orbit to a lunar orbit.

Cislunar Transporter. Blue Origin’s lunar architecture begins with a New Glenn rocket by placing the transport in the low terrestrial orbit. Additional rocket launches would take advantage of the upper stage of the New Glenn to fill the liquid hydrogen and oxygen tug tanks.

Once full, the Transporter southern would travel to an almost rectilinear halo (NRHO) next to the moon. The Blue Moon Mark II lunar module, thrown into another New Glenn, would go to that same orbit, where it would be attached to the transport to recharge its tanks, obtaining the necessary fuel to alunize and return to the NRHO.

Simpler than Starship. Blue Origin’s architecture is easier than the HLS system of Spacex, in which a starship stays in terrestrial orbit and has to be coupled with several starship-cysterna (a maximum of eight, a maximum of eight, a maximum of eight, According to Elon Musk) Before recovering enough fuel to travel to the moon.

On the other hand, Blue Origin is moving forward in the storage technology of cryogenic propellants without evaporation (“Zero Boil-Off”) that he hopes to demonstrate in June 2025 to solve one of the main problems of liquid fuels in long-term missions.

An opportunity. These Blue Origin advances charge special relevance to the drastic cuts proposed for NASA. The 2026 budgets propose the cancellation of the SLS rocket and the Orion ship after the Artemis III mission, scheduled for 2027, which will use a Spacex starship to transport astronauts from the lunar orbit to the satellite surface.

This dismantling of the Artemisa program As we know it leaves a vacuum that the White House intends to fill with rockets and commercial ships that allow more ambitious subsequent lunar missions. Although Spacex with Starship is an obvious candidate, Blue Origin is making it difficult.

Images | Blue Origin

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