Moon Monday #238: The long march to Luna continues

On August 15, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) and the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) conducted a 30-second static fire test for the upcoming Long March 10 series of crew-capable rockets using a high fidelity first stage structure. China has thus now successfully simultaneously fired the seven YF-100K high-thrust kerolox engines to validate the design system, components, and materials which will power Long March 10A rockets to launch its next-generation human spacecraft named Mengzhou to Earth orbit. China will combine three such first stages to form the core stage of the Long March 10, which will launch humans to the Moon. Notably, the test was conducted at the same launch complex in Wenchang which China will use for said crewed Moon missions.

Unlike the US Artemis efforts, the Chinese have been consistently hitting milestones in the lead up to its first crewed Moon landing aimed to be accomplished by 2030. The article linked below provides a review of all such recent milestones.

On our Moon
from where the Sun doesn’t shine,
a new era will dawn.
– Jatan

NASA un-nukes its decision to steer away from using nuclear power on the Moon

Right after the US Presidential NASA budget request for FY2026 noted that the agency will focus on “advanced non-nuclear power in support of lunar and Mars missions”, NASA through its new Acting Administrator Sean Duffy has now announced a Request for Information asking the industry to design a 100-kilowatt-plus nuclear fission power system with a mass less than 15,000 kilograms that can be ready to launch by 2030 to use on the Moon’s surface for a decade. NASA’s previous $15 million award in 2022 distributed equally to three companies was for such systems with ~40 kilowatts of electrical power. The agency’s driving rationale is that nuclear systems enable missions to operate continually through the long and frigid lunar nights, and in permanently shadowed regions on the poles where the water ice is.

Missing from NASA’s latest announcement is any mention of Zeno Power, which raised $50 million earlier this year, a major chunk of which is going towards developing and demonstrating the company’s nuclear electric power system on the Moon for NASA by 2027. NASA’s now-former Chief Technologist A. C. Charania recently joined Zeno as Senior Vice President of Space Business Development. As part of public-private Tipping Point contracts in 2023, NASA awarded $15 million to Project Harmonia, a team led by Zeno Power which includes two lunar surface delivery vendors from the agency’s CLPS program: Blue Origin and Intuitive Machines. Project Harmonia aims to demonstrate a radioisotope generator using a Stirling engine instead of traditional thermocouples to convert radioactive heat into electrical power. The system will use the Americium-241 isotope, which is more readily available than the conventionally used Plutonium-238. As such, Zeno would very likely participate in this old-not-new initiative from NASA.

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Artemis updates

• NASA continues preparations to launch the Artemis II Moon mission in 2026. The latest test involved its crew putting on their spacesuits and heading to the launchpad to simulate a possible nighttime launch. They also practiced an emergency escape scenario should something go wrong in the launch complex. In the meanwhile, technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida completed fueling the crew’s Orion spacecraft. Next up, Orion will be integrated with its emergency escape system. In the lead up to the Artemis II launch, NASA will conduct a series of 10 integrated tests over the remainder year.

• As Firefly continues building its second, third, and fourth CLPS Moon landing missions as well as an orbital imaging service, the company is hiring a Deputy Chief Engineer.
• Leonard David reports that as part of NASA’s Lunar Surface Technology Research (LuSTR) program, the Colorado School of Mines has built a large simulated lunar surface facility to enable testing of rovers and other lunar hardware designs. The testbed contains over 100,000 kilograms of lunar soil simulant.