Moon Monday #274: Artemis updates and Japanese missions galore

Artemis updates

• Science communicator Hank Green made this interactive website of photos spread across the timeline of the Artemis II lunar mission and flyby.
• Among the technological checkpoints passed by Artemis II, the NASA-MIT-developed optical laser communications terminal on the Orion spacecraft was successfully used to transmit and receive data and imagery during the mission. Its peak transfer speed was close to 260 Mbps as designed, including at an off-the-shelf receiver on Earth. [Note: The linked report from Eric Berger states the off-the-shelf receiver speed as 260 MBps at one place, which is incorrect since the right value is 260 megabits per second.] As part of an optical communications program, the system demonstrated its aim of sending more data with lower size, power, and weight compared to traditional radio systems. However, the Artemis IV Moon landing mission is currently not planned to have a laser communications unit.

• The bulk of the SLS rocket core stage for the crewed Artemis III Earth orbit mission reached Kennedy Space Center on April 27. There it will await its four engines as well as missing details of which lander will be ready to be tested for the mission’s goal of checking out baseline docking and life support systems ahead of a crewed lunar landing attempt on Artemis IV.

• Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon ‘Mark 1’ lander, named Endurance, has passed space environmental testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The tests were conducted at the center’s Thermovac Chamber A, which simulates temperatures and vacuum conditions the lander is expected to face during its flight to the Moon and at the lunar south pole where it intends to land. Blue had aimed to launch Endurance by the end of this year, following a one-year delay, to test and validate key design decisions and landing systems ahead of using them for flights with astronauts on the larger ‘Mark 2’ lander. However, the failure of the third New Glenn rocket last month could delay Mark I’s launch further. Even as Blue and NASA aim to accelerate New Glenn launches and lunar landings, they are taking a cautious approach since they need Endurance to be successful in order to set things on the right path for Artemis crewed landings. How quickly Blue brings the New Glenn to flight again is something to watch out for.

• Relatedly, Blue Origin and NASA have setup a full-size mock crew cabin of the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander for ground-based astronaut testing and feedback. NASA says the mockup will evolve to support multi-phase mission simulations ahead of crewed flights. Notably, China has made such a simulator already. In newly unveiled details on the development of various elements of China’s crewed Moon missions, a paper revealed that Chinese taikonauts have been training for various landing scenarios in a Lanyue lander simulator, which has manual control options to override autonomous touchdown.
• To begin working towards the ambitious new Artemis Moonbase plan, NASA issued a procurement notice on April 27 announcing its intent to increase the budget cap of its CLPS program from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion so as to send more lunar landers this decade.

Japan funds public-private lunar missions

As part of the 10-year, ¥1-trillion “Space Strategy Fund”, the Japanese government and JAXA have been selecting various companies to fund or co-fund the development of key systems which show promise in advancing the state of Japanese space technology and exploration. Thankfully, lunar missions are one of the fund’s themes, continuing Japan’s interest in the Moon. Here are highlights of major lunar exploration related selections part of the fund.

• ispace Japan was selected to develop, launch, and operate a lunar orbiter which will use a terahertz wave sensor system to locate and map water ice deposits on the Moon’s poles. Data from this orbiter will be analyzed in tandem with direct surface and subsurface measurements made by the upcoming joint Indo-Japanese LUPEX south polar mission.
• ispace Japan has also been tentatively selected to demonstrate a precision landing on the Moon’s south pole later this decade with aid from navigation and communications (navcom) relay satellites in lunar orbit. This is interesting; JAXA has already achieved a precision robotic landing with the SLIM mission in 2024 without needing any external spacecraft. The move therefore denotes other considerations such as cost and abstracting out the sophisticated touchdown capability to a persistent infrastructure layer at the Moon so every lander can utilize it.
• Speaking of navcom satellites, ArkEdge was selected to continue building the core technologies of a lunar navcom constellation for future national and commercial use.
• JAOPS was selected to develop a lunar rover which will fire an electron beam to melt and solidify lunar soil, the first step ahead of constructing lunar infrastructure from local materials in the future.

More Moon

• Advanced Space has passed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) phase for the development of the Oracle-P lunar satellite. Funded by the US Air Force, the mission’s goal is to track other spacecraft and objects in cislunar space.
• NASA has awarded a $6.9 million contract to Interlune to develop a lunar payload which collects lunar soil samples, sorts its particles by size, extracts solar wind implanted volatile gases from it, and measures their quantities. This work will leverage the MSOLO mass spectrometer design which NASA had developed and sent to the Moon on Intuitive Machines’ second lunar flight last year. MSOLO will fly again on the VIPER rover in late 2027.
• US-based Lunar Outpost, which builds lunar rovers, has raised $30 million in Series B funding with an eye towards accelerating missions to the Moon.
• With the joining of Ireland this month, all 23 ESA member states have now signed the US-led Artemis Accords for cooperative lunar exploration. The total number of Accords signatories now stands at 67. However, as Gateway’s cancellation demonstrated most recently, the Accords has little bearing on preserving—much less flourishing—international partnerships in the Artemis program.
• If you’re a young space scientist, engineer, or student excited about the future of lunar exploration, you should consider joining NextGen, a community which provides free resources, guidance, and networking opportunities for working in the lunar sphere.