The Space Roundup - April 18th, 2021
Hello, my dear space lovers!
Here we are, yet another week full of space awesomeness! Before we start I wanted to thank my Patreon supporters: you rock! :)
Now, are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
SpaceX goes to the Moon!
Wow! What a surprise! This week NASA has awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a version of the Starship that is reusable and capable of taking humans from the lunar Gateway to the surface of the Moon and back. To be honest, this took me off-guard as it was the most “unusual design” out of the three proposals that were fighting for this contract. Remember we’re talking about a massive 50m-tall rocket (that’s the size of a 15 story building!). See the pic below:
The good thing about this spacecraft is that it can provide massive habitational space both on the surface and in the Gateway, it can deliver serious payloads to the surface and best of all, unlike the other proposals, it can be refueled and reused as many times as wanted. I see Gateway + Starship as two foundational elements of a lunar system that is sustainable to establish a permanent human presence on our natural satellite.
It is the SLS + Orion capsule side of the story that is still not reusable and hyper-expensive, but I think that might change in the future as more commercial capabilities are added to the mix: why not having other companies take astronauts to the Gateway and back as SpaceX is doing today with the ISS? I think it’s just a matter of time that Boing, SpaceX, or others take that step.
The year of commercial space for SpaceX?
This has been a good start of the year for SpaceX for sure! To recap what they are achieving as a commercial provider and all the contracts they are getting: they have a contract to frequently take cargo and astronauts to the ISS, they are taking commercial civilians to orbit as part of the Inspiration4 mission, they are taking civilians to a trip around the moon with the DearMoon mission, they are taking the Astrobotic lander loaded with NASA’s VIPER rover to the lunar surface, also Masten’s and Intuitive Machines lunar landers, they are launching NASA’s Psyche mission to the asteroid belt, IXPE & DART scientific missions, the two first modules of the lunar Gateway, plus many, many small launches and contracts… and now the Human Landing System for the Moon… how crazy is this? The volume of contracts and the quantity of challenging missions they are attracting honestly blow my mind.
Going nuclear
Traveling long distances in space has been a key challenge for current chemical and electric propulsion systems. The DARPA agency is heavily investing in the research for a nuclear propulsion system and after contracting General Atomics last week for developing a small portable nuclear reactor, this week they have awarded two contracts to Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin to develop a rocket for agile cislunar operations, using a nuclear reactor to heat up the rocket fuel. It’s amazing to see progress in this area that has been “forbidden” for a long time due to political reasons.
Blue Origin’s successful test
Talking about Blue Origin, this week we’ve seen Blue Origin successfully launch and recover their New Shepard spacecraft, as a final test before carrying people to 100kms of altitude.
China to explore the limits of the solar system
Not happy with exploring the Moon, building an orbital lab, orbiting Mars before landing their first martian rover, the Chinese Space agency announced earlier this week that they want to start exploring the interstellar space with the launch of two spacecraft like the Voyager probes. Read more about the mission here.
And the Arabs go to the Moon!
UAE has announced that they want to join the list of countries sending spacecraft to the moon. They want to send a rover to the Moon by 2022. Next year! Honestly I don’t know if they’ll be able to achieve it, but it’s a good indicator of high interest, and we all know how intense and focused they can can be when they want to achieve something. Go, UAE!
Picture of the week
The picture of this week was taken by the Hubble telescope and released on April 2nd, 2021. It is the Veil Nebula, 2100 light-years from us. Look at that! More details here.
Upcoming launches & events
Here are the most relevant launches and events of the week. Note: these are all tentative dates that are yet to be confirmed.
Monday, April 19th - Ingenuity Helicopter test flight on Mars.
(??) Tuesday, April 20th - SpaceX Starship SN15 | 10 km Flight
Thursday, April 22nd - SpaceX Crew-2 mission to the ISS
Sunday, April 25th - Soyuz • OneWeb 6
And that’s it for this week! :) If you enjoy my Space Roundup, PLEASE SHARE IT by clicking the SHARE button below, consider supporting me on Patreon (or buy me a coffee!) to help me share our excitement about human space flight with the world:
Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut