NASA chief urges new ride to the Blue Moon. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket was scheduled to launch the company’s first lunar lander, Blue Moon Mark 1, this autumn. The Blue Moon test mission is an important precursor to Blue Origin’s future human-rated Moon lander for the Artemis program, and NASA is eager to see it fly. The rocket explosion on the launch pad last week makes launches at New Glenn impossible this year. NASA now wants to find an alternative launcher for Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon demo mission, Spaceflight Now reports. In an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described the “whole of government response” to the May 28 incident at New Glenn. “We are also separating the lander from the launch vehicle and the pad,” he said.
Only one option... “NASA is laser-focused on the lander because we are laser-focused on our mission of returning astronauts to the surface of the Moon no later than 2028, and we’re going to be able to keep that lander in development, making progress, so it’s available for our test mission in 2027, which is Artemis III, and potentially available to meet our landing objectives in 2028,” Isaacman said.A NASA spokesperson confirmed to Spaceflight Now that NASA wants to see the launch of the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander and potentially the Blue Moon Mark 2 crew lander transferred to a rocket that is not New Glenn. For the Mark 1, at least, the only realistic option is SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, but there are many technical obstacles to making that happen.
Artemis III booster segments shipped to KSC. While there is some uncertainty about the timeline and landers, the rocket for the Artemis III mission is being prepared for launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Northrop Grumman began shipping all of the remaining solid rocket booster segments for the mission’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from Utah on Tuesday, June 2, NASASpaceflight reports. The Union Pacific train will deliver the remaining eight booster segments to Kennedy, joining other booster components previously sent to the Florida launch site.
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