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O’CONNELL;NOMADDThe Private Sector
Stakes a Claim
Private companies have also made bold
claims for the moon this year, though
aside from Israel’s nonprofit SpaceIL,
none has managed to get there.
SpaceX has been working on its
Starship vehicle as a means to reach
Mars for years now. In July, SpaceX CEO
Elon Musk claimed that he could land an
uncrewed ship on the moon in less than
two years, and a crewed ship within four.
The first major tests of Starship — using
a prototype called Starhopper (below)
— have already begun. One of the tests,
a tethered launch on July 16 that was
literally connected to the ground, ended
with the craft engulfed in flames, though
it did survive. It went on to successfully
complete an untethered “hop” on July 25.
Further tests are proceeding.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin founder and
Amazon owner Jeff Bezos unveiled in May
the Blue Moon lander, a spacecraft that
can deliver up to 7 tons of cargo — and
possibly crew — to the lunar surface.
Along with Blue Moon itself, the company
revealed a new BE-7 rocket, which Bezos
says has been in development for three
years. Blue Origin began test-firing the
rocket for the first time this summer, and
more tests are underway. Together, Bezos
says, these developments are a way
to return humans to the moon’s
surface — “this time to stay.”
It’s a bold claim for a
spacecraft company
that’s only reached
the edge of space
— and never fully
orbited. But both
private companies
are working to push
the limits of human
spaceflight, and to
keep NASA on its toes.NASA’s
Lunar PlansPromise
Much,Deliver Little
NASA’s own lunar plans have
been no more certain this year. The
agency hasn’t put humans on the moon
since 1972, and had recently focused on
Mars as the next big destination, with the
moon serving as a pit stop. But in March,
Vice President Mike Pence changed those
plans, instead calling for Americans —
and the first woman — to walk on the
moon by 2024. NASA Administrator Jim
Bridenstine has estimated the cost of the
new program — dubbed Artemis, after the
lunar goddess and twin sister of Apollo —
at $20 billion to $30 billion.
In July, NASA pushed ahead with
a successful safety test of its Orion
crew capsule — a project already in
development — and later that month
Pence announced that it was ready for
flight. The plan is for an uncrewed launch
to take place after June 2020, with the first
human-led flight happening in 2022.
NASA has maintained this accelerated
timeline in spite of missed deadlines by
Boeing, which was contracted to build the
mighty Space Launch System rocket that
will carry the Orion capsule into space.
Pence and Bridenstine have talked a big
game, but it’s unclear how they will meet
these looming goals if Boeing continues to
fall behind.
In the meantime, NASA has called for,
and approved, a series of small science
and technology demonstrations as part
of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services
program. The agency hopes these cargo
missions to the lunar surface will start
launching on small, private rockets before
the end of 2019 — another goal that
sounds less like a realistic deadline, and
more like wishful thinking.
Jennifer Walterrr, an assistant editor at
Discover, contributed to this story package.