Today the federal judge overseeing the Blue Origin lawsuit against NASA and SpaceX made his decision. Blue Origin, of course, lost the lawsuit, but will this be the end?
Updated with statements from Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos.
It has been a long time since we’ve seen engines test-fired in Starbase, but Thursday afternoon, SpaceX did not just one but two. These tests mark a significant milestone for Vacuum Raptor development.
Artemis III landing on the Moon in 2024 has always been a lofty goal, but NASA officials stuck to the date even as the previous administration left. Today, they began to officially acknowledge the breakdown of the deadline.
This week, SpaceX has continued their work at Starbase, 34 more OneWeb satellites were launched into orbit, and SLS has gained its Orion mass simulator.
A few weeks back the US Government Accountability Office denied Blue Origin and Dynetic’s protest of NASA’s Human Landing System contract. Since then Blue Origin has been on a PR campaign to throw mud at the winner, SpaceX, and has started a lawsuit against NASA.
After a full week of immense progress toward SpaceX’s first orbital Starship vehicles. The SpaceX teams down at Starbase finally stacked their first Starship launch vehicle.
SpaceX continues to push hard towards the first stack of a Starship and Super Heavy vehicle. Super Heavy Booster 4 is currently positioned on the launch pad and SpaceX is working towards the stacking of Starship 20 as soon as today.
We haven’t received a formal update on Starship’s development since the 2019 event in front of the Mk1 prototype. This week Elon Musk promised to give us one this year.
Back on April 16th, NASA announced that SpaceX would win the bid for Artemis’ Human Landing System contract. After a year-long competition, Blue Origin disagrees with the selection and hopes to get it changed.
After what seems to be a successful static fire Monday afternoon of the three Raptor engines. SpaceX is getting ready for another Starship flight of the upgraded SN15.
In a special video conversation with space communicator Alex Orphanos, we discuss Tom Cruise going to the International Space Station, NASA’s three Human Landing System proposals for Artemis lunar missions, the upcoming SpaceX Demo-2 mission and NASA returning human spaceflight to the U.S., and much more.
NASA is returning astronauts to the Moon in this decade for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The Artemis program will see the first woman and next man walk on the Moon by 2024. The program will rely on NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, and Orion capsule for transporting astronauts from Earth to the Moon.
Artemis will also require a modern human landing system, or HLS, and today NASA announced which companies will be tasked with developing the new hardware.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Leidos subsidiary Dynetics have been selected as commercial partners to design and develop NASA’s modern human landing system.
NASA outlines how each company’s proposal for new human landing systems:
Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) – a three-stage lander to be launched on its own New Glenn Rocket System and ULA Vulcan launch system.
Dynetics (a Leidos company) of Huntsville, Alabama, is developing the Dynetics Human Landing System (DHLS) – a single structure providing the ascent and descent capabilities that will launch on the ULA Vulcan launch system.
SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, is developing the Starship – a fully integrated lander that will use the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket.
Here’s how each Human Landing System proposal will work: