NASA picks SpaceX to fly cargo to moon-orbiting Gateway space station

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://www.space.com/spacex-wins-cargo-contract-nasa-gateway-moon-station.html


Dragon XL will supply the Gateway.

Artist's illustration of the SpaceX Dragon XL as it is deployed from the Falcon Heavy's second stage in high Earth orbit on its way to the Gateway in lunar orbit.
(Image: © SpaceX)
SpaceX cargo craft will soon reach much farther out into the final frontier, if all goes according to plan.

The California-based company already flies cargo missions to and from the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. Now, SpaceX has scored a contract to supply Gateway, the moon-orbiting space station that the agency aims to start building in 2022, agency officials announced Friday (March 27).

Artemis exploration program, which seeks to establish a sustainable, long-term human presence on and around the moon by the late 2020s. The small space station will serve as a jumping-off point for sorties, both crewed and uncrewed, to the lunar surface.


SpaceX will help to keep the Gateway supplied, delivering scientific experiments and a variety of other gear to the outpost, NASA officials said. The company is guaranteed two missions under its newly announced Gateway Logistics Services contract.

SpaceX's robotic ISS resupply runs employ the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, which can loft 13,200 lbs. (6,000 kilograms, or 6 metric tons) to low-Earth orbit. But SpaceX's Gateway missions will use different hardware: the huge Falcon Heavy rocket and a special capsule variant called Dragon XL. (SpaceX has also developed another Dragon version, Crew Dragon, which will fly astronauts to and from the ISS under yet another NASA contract.)

Dragon XL will be able to carry more than 5 metric tons of cargo to the Gateway, SpaceX representatives said via Twitter Friday.

“Returning to the moon and supporting future space exploration requires affordable delivery of significant amounts of cargo,” SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement on Friday.

"Through our partnership with NASA, SpaceX has been delivering scientific research and critical supplies to the International Space Station since 2012, and we are honored to continue the work beyond Earth’s orbit and carry Artemis cargo to Gateway," she added.

Dragon cargo missions to the ISS typically last about a month from launch to splashdown. But Dragon XL will likely stay attached to the Gateway for six to 12 months at a time, NASA officials said.

Other companies may end up joining SpaceX in the Gateway resupply game.

"The Gateway Logistics Services contract enables NASA to order missions for as long as 12 years with a 15-year performance period and provides the ability to add new competitive providers," NASA officials wrote in the same statement, adding that the total value of these deals will be capped at $7 billion.

"These missions will support NASA’s plans for sustainable exploration with both international and commercial partners, while developing the experience and capabilities necessary to send humans to Mars," the officials added.

Indeed, collaboration with commercial companies is a key part of NASA's lunar exploration goals. For example, the agency will rely on privately built landers to ferry both scientific experiments and astronauts to the lunar surface from Gateway. (The first crewed missions may not stop over at Gateway, however. NASA has apparently taken Gateway off the "critical path" for its planned 2024 crewed lunar landing, though agency officials have said they remain committed to the space station over the long term.)

SpaceX is in the running to provide NASA landing services as well. In November 2019, NASA announced that the company is eligible to bid on the delivery of robotic agency payloads to the lunar surface. SpaceX would use its Starship deep-space transportation system, which the company is developing primarily with the purpose of helping to settle Mars, to do this work.

 

[jamahir]

@Hamartia Antidote, is there a technical reason why the ISS cannot be moved to lunar orbit, apart from the distance ??

 

[Dante80]

@Hamartia Antidote, is there a technical reason why the ISS cannot be moved to lunar orbit, apart from the distance ??

The distance itself means that you need a delta-V budget of roughly 4.04 KM/s to go to LLO (for example). The ISS weighs 420 tons, and you will still have to add to that the weight of the fuel itself (and the engines, and the tanks) to brake the station when it reaches the moon, so as to enter a stable orbit.

Then there are a lot more problems even if you manage to get the ISS up to the Moon. The ISS electronics and shielding are designed to operate close to Earth, within the protection of our planet’s magnetic field. They are not properly hardened to deal with deep-space radiation. The ISS communication systems are designed to handle signals from low-Earth orbit, not from the far more distant lunar orbit. The ISS life support systems are designed around a cadence of regular supply visits from the ground. Adapting the ISS to work at the Moon would require essentially a full redesign.

And even then—much of the current ISS hardware is aging or old. Some of it is already nearing the end of its design lifetime. In the end, you’d spend a huge amount trying to move the ISS, then another huge amount redesigning it, and you’d end up with a aging station that is not even properly designed for any of the things you’d want to do at the Moon, like sending other missions out deeper into the solar system.

This is not a feasible challenge, when compared to making Gateway from scratch.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

@Hamartia Antidote, is there a technical reason why the ISS cannot be moved to lunar orbit, apart from the distance ??

As @Dante80 has explained the Space Station itself has taken a severe radiation beating from almost constant exposure to the Sun. Just as when you leave something outside in the Sun it just starts fading and getting brittle the ISS is subject to decay. While they talk about funding to keep it going for a few more years there is only so much before it becomes a safety issue and not a money issue.

 

[jamahir]

The ISS electronics and shielding are designed to operate close to Earth, within the protection of our planet’s magnetic field. They are not properly hardened to deal with deep-space radiation.

That explains why the ISS residents use regular laptops.

Also, I read somewhere that SpaceX uses regular microprocessors and boards arranged in triple formation for fault tolerance instead of the specialized triple-transistored microprocessors that other space agencies use. Is this true ?? Will this be the procedure for their Moon and Mars missions too ??