Orbit Beyond, Inc., usually stylized as ORBITBeyond, is an aerospace company that builds technologies for lunar exploration. Its products include configurable delivery
lunar lander
A lunar lander or Moon lander is a Lander (spacecraft), spacecraft designed to Moon landing, land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2024, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing s ...
s with a payload capacity of up to , and rovers.Orbit Beyond, Inc. Accessed: 29 October 2018.
Overview
On November 29, 2018, ORBITBeyond was selected to bid robotic lander contracts from NASA's
Commercial Lunar Payload Services
Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon. Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources, test in situ resource ...
TeamIndus
TeamIndus (incorporated as Axiom Research Labs
for surface operations. Their aim is to create collaborative and scalable spacecraft exploration platforms to support commercial market growth in the cislunar space.
On May 31, 2019, NASA announced that it had selected OrbitBeyond as one of three commercial partners to deliver NASA payloads to the Moon with its Z-01 lander in 2020 and 2021. OrbitBeyond was awarded $97 million to land NASA payloads in
Mare Imbrium
Mare Imbrium (Latin ''imbrium'', the "Sea of Showers" or "Sea of Rains") is a vast lunar mare, lava plain within the Imbrium Basin on the Moon and is one of the larger craters in the Solar System. The Imbrium Basin formed from the collision ...
by September 2020. However, the company dropped out of this contract in July 2019, citing its inability to complete the missions on schedule. Orbit Beyond remains a CLPS contractor eligible to bid on future contracts.
Spacecraft
The company is developing two lunar landers, ''Z-01'' and ''Z-02'', and a small rover called ECA.
''Z-01''
''Z-01'' is based on
TeamIndus
TeamIndus (incorporated as Axiom Research Labs previously known as HHK1. On its maiden mission it would carry up to 40 kg of commercial payloads. It features a main engine that produces 440 N, and sixteen 22 N thrusters for finer orbital maneuvers and
attitude control
Spacecraft attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of a spacecraft (vehicle or satellite) with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, ...
(orientation). Its first mission was planned to launch in Q3 2020, but the CLPS contract was cancelled by Orbit Beyond in July 2019.
The mission was targeting
Mare Imbrium
Mare Imbrium (Latin ''imbrium'', the "Sea of Showers" or "Sea of Rains") is a vast lunar mare, lava plain within the Imbrium Basin on the Moon and is one of the larger craters in the Solar System. The Imbrium Basin formed from the collision ...
(29.52º N 25.68º W) just north of Annegrit crater. The landing ellipse for this mission was approximately 2 km x 1.9 km. The lander features automated hazard avoidance capabilities.
One of the science payloads is the Lunar Ultraviolet Cosmic Imager, an 80 mm aperture telescope that will scan the sky in the near UV frequencies (200–320 nm) to look for transient sources. The telescope has been completed and tested, and as of March 2019, is awaiting integration to the lander.
ECA rover
''Z-01'' lander would deploy a micro-rover called ECA (Ek Choti si Asha, Hindi for "A Small Hope"), also developed by
Team Indus
TeamIndus (incorporated as Axiom Research Labs
''Z-02'' is a larger lander concept that would carry up to 500 kg of commercial payloads.
Commercial Lunar Payload Services
Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon. Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources, test in situ resource ...
(CLPS)
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Newspace
Private spaceflight is any spaceflight development that is not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA.
During the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pione ...