New Delhi: Blue Origin conducted environmental testing of its Blue Moon Mark 1 Moon lander in a thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston.
The cargo lander, named Endurance is a commercial demonstration mission to advance a Human Landing System in support of NASA’s ambitious Artemis Programme to establish a sustained human presence on the lunar surface. The test was conducted as a public-private partnership through a reimbursable Space Act Agreement. Endurance will demonstrate pinpoint landing, cryogenic propulsion, as well as autonomous guidance, navigation and control capabilities in support of future operations on the lunar surface.
The cargo lander will carry a pair of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) payloads, a stereo camera to study lunar plumes, or material rising from the lunar surface because of sunlight, and an array of high-resolution cameras that will collect imagery of the engine plume of the lander interacting with the surface during the descent and landing phase. The lander will also carry a Laser Retroreflective Array which allows orbiting spacecraft to precisely determine their location.
The test chamber
The vacuum chamber at Johnson is one of the world’s largest thermal vacuum test facilities, recreating the vacuum of space as well as the extreme temperatures that the spacecraft will be exposed to over the course of the flight. By recreating the conditions on the ground, the performance of the systems can be evaluated, and the thermal and structural integrity of the spacecraft can be verified before the launch. The lessons learned from the design, integration and testing of Endurance will provide valuable insights for NASA’s Artemis programme. Blue Origin plans to develop a larger Blue Moon Mark 2 lander for ferrying crews from lunar orbit to the lunar surface. Blue Origin aims to launch Endurance by the end of the year, with a landing zone close to the Lunar South Pole.
