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Lunar CATALYST
The Lunar CATALYST (Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown) initiative is an attempt by NASA to encourage the development of robotic lunar landers that can be integrated with United States commercial launch capabilities to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. NASA aims to build on its partnerships with the U.S. commercial space industry that are developing new spacecraft and rockets capable of delivering cargo and crew to low Earth orbit. Recognizing United States industry's interest in reaching and exploring the Moon, the Agency has competitively selected three partners to spur commercial cargo transportation capabilities to the surface of the Moon. The hope is commercial robotic lunar lander capabilities will address emerging demand by private customers who wish to conduct activities on the Moon and could also enable new science and exploration missions of interest to the larger scientific and academic communities. Currently the Lunar CATALYST initiative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunar CATALYST Initiative Logo
Lunar most commonly means "of or relating to the Moon". Lunar may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Lunar'' (series), a series of video games * "Lunar" (song), by David Guetta * "Lunar", a song by Priestess from the 2009 album ''Prior to the Fire'' * Lunars, a fictional race in the series ''The Lunar Chronicles'' by Marissa Meyer Other uses * Lunar Magic, Super Mario World level editor * Lunar Design, or LUNAR, a San Francisco-based design consultancy * Hasselblad Lunar, a digital camera * Lunar, a brandname of Ethinylestradiol/cyproterone acetate, a birth control pill * Lunar C (Jake Brook, born 1990), English rapper See also * * * Lunar calendar, based upon the monthly cycles of the Moon's phase ** Lunar day, in such calendars ** Lunar month, in such calendars * Moon (other) * Luna (other) Luna commonly refers to: * Earth's Moon, named "Luna" in Latin * Luna (goddess), the ancient Roman personification of the Moon Luna may also refer to: Places ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MX-1 (lunar Lander)
Moon Express (MoonEx; vehicle model prefix: MX) is an American privately held early-stage company formed in 2010 by a group of Silicon Valley and space entrepreneurs. It had the goal of winning the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, and of ultimately mining the Moon for natural resources of economic value. The company was not able to make a launch attempt to reach the Moon by March 31, 2018, the deadline for the prize. Since late 2018, and , Moon Express is focused on supporting NASA under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract. History In August 2010, Robert D. Richards, Naveen Jain, and Barney Pell co-founded Moon Express, a Mountain View, California-based company that plans to offer commercial lunar robotic transportation and data services with a long-term goal of mining the Moon for resources, including elements that are rare on Earth, including niobium, yttrium and dysprosium. Beginning in 2010, Moon Express based itself at the NASA Ames Research Center. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Missions To The Moon
As part of human exploration of the Moon, numerous space missions have been undertaken to study Earth's natural satellite. Of the Moon landings, Luna 2 of the Soviet Union was the first spacecraft to reach its surface successfully, intentionally impacting the Moon on 13 September 1959. In 1966, Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to achieve a controlled soft landing, while Luna 10 became the first mission to enter orbit. Between 1968 and 1972, crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the United States as part of the Apollo program. Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to enter orbit in December 1968, and it was followed by Apollo 10 in May 1969. Six missions landed humans on the Moon, beginning with Apollo 11 in July 1969, during which Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. Apollo 13 was intended to land; however, it was restricted to a flyby due to a malfunction aboard the spacecraft. All nine crewed missions returned safely to the Earth. While th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA Programs
This is a list of NASA missions, both crewed and robotic, since the establishment of NASA in 1958. There are over 80 currently active science missions. X-Plane program Since 1945, NACA (NASA's predecessor) and, since 1958, NASA have conducted the X-Plane Program. The program was originally intended to create a family of experimental aircraft not intended for production beyond the limited number of each design built solely for flight research. The first X-Plane, the Bell X-1, was the first rocket-powered airplane to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947. X-Planes have set numerous milestones since then, both crewed and unpiloted. Human spaceflight NASA has successfully launched 166 crewed flights. Three have ended in failure, causing the deaths of seventeen crewmembers in total: Apollo 1 (which never launched) killed three crew members in 1967, STS-51-L ( the ''Challenger'' disaster) killed seven in 1986, and STS-107 ( the ''Columbia'' disaster) killed seven m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Morpheus
Project Morpheus was a NASA project that began in 2010 to develop a vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) test vehicle called the Morpheus Lander. It is intended to demonstrate a new nontoxic spacecraft propellant system (methane and oxygen) and an autonomous landing and hazard detection technology. The prototype planetary lander is capable of autonomous flight, including vertical takeoff and landings. The vehicles are NASA-designed robotic landers that will be able to land and take off with of cargo on the Moon. The prospect is an engine that runs reliably on propellants that are not only cheaper and safer here on Earth, but could also be potentially manufactured on the Moon and Mars. (See: In-situ resource utilization.) The Alpha prototype lander was manufactured and assembled at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) and Armadillo Aerospace's facility near Dallas. The prototype lander is a "spacecraft" that is about in diameter, weighs approximately and consists of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA Mighty Eagle
The Mighty Eagle (also known as the Warm Gas Test Article) is a Prototype Robotic Lander developed by NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The vehicle is an autonomous flying testbed that is used for testing hardware, sensors and algorithms. These sensors and algorithms include such things as onboard cameras that, with specialized guidance, navigation and control software, could aid in the capture of orbiting space debris, in-space docking with a fuel depot, docking of a robotic lander with an orbiting command module and the rendezvous of multiple unmanned stages for deep space human exploration of the Solar System. History Initial software and hardware development were done on precursor vehicle called the Cold Gas Test Article which used compressed air as a propellant and had about 10 seconds of flight time. The knowledge gained from this development and testing was used in the design of the Mighty Eagle. The Mighty Eagle prototype lander was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) was a NASA program to coordinate the development of vehicles for the delivery of crew and cargo to the International Space Station by private companies. The program was announced on January 18, 2006 and successfully flew all cargo demonstration flights by September 2013, when the program ended. NASA's Final Report on the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program considers it an unqualified success and a model for future public-private collaboration. Compared to traditional cost-plus contracts employed by NASA, such as the $12 billion Orion (spacecraft) contract, the unprecedented efficiency of the $800 million COTS investment resulted in "two new U.S. medium-class launch vehicles and two automated cargo spacecraft". NASA signed COTS agreements with SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) in 2006, but later terminated the agreement with RpK due to insufficient private funding. NASA then signed an agreement with Orbital Scien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commercial Crew Development
Development of the Commercial Crew Program began in the second round of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, which was rescoped from a technology development program for human spaceflight to a competitive development program that would produce the spacecraft to be used in the Commercial Crew Program to provide crew transportation services to and from the International Space Station (ISS). To implement the program NASA awarded a series of competitive fixed-price contracts to private vendors starting in 2011. Operational contracts to fly astronauts were awarded in September 2014 to SpaceX and Boeing. Each company performed an uncrewed orbital test flight in 2019, and operational flights started in November 2020. SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-1 2019 flight of Dragon 2 arrived at the International Space Station in March 2019 and returned via splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. After completion of its test series, a Crew Dragon spacecraft made its first operational Commercia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Florida
Space Florida is the aerospace economic development agency of the State of Florida. The agency was created by consolidating three existing state space entities into a single new organization via the Space Florida Act, enacted in May 2006 by the Florida Legislature. The predecessor entities were the Florida Space Authority, Florida Space Research Institute and Florida Aerospace Finance Corporation. History In 2008, ''Aviation Week'' magazine reported that the U.S. Air Force committed to lease Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36 to Space Florida for future use by the Athena III launch system, but that program had not moved forward as late as 2013. In 2010, Space Florida became a "Preferred Partner" of the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GXLP), and, as such, had offered an additional bonus to teams that might have launched their Google Lunar X PRIZE-winning missions from the state of Florida. In the event, the GXLP expired in 2018 before any team had even launched a rover mission to atte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masten Space Systems
Masten Space Systems was an aerospace manufacturer startup company in Mojave, California (formerly in Santa Clara, California) that was developing a line of vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) rockets, initially for uncrewed research sub-orbital spaceflights and eventually intended to support robotic orbital spaceflight launches. In 2020, NASA awarded Masten a contract for a lunar lander mission; NASA was to pay Masten US$75.9 million for Masten to build and launch a lander called XL-1 to take NASA and other customer payloads to the south pole of the Moon. Masten Mission One would have been Masten's first space flight; it was scheduled for launch in November 2023. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 28 July 2022. The company would later be purchased by Astrobotic Technology on 11 September 2022. Overview Masten Space Systems was a Mojave, California based rocket company that was developing a line of reusable VTVL spacecraft, and related rocket propulsion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. NASA has since led most American space exploration, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968-1972 Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. NASA supports the International Space Station and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the crewed lunar Artemis program, Commercial Crew spacecraft, and the planned Lunar Gateway space station. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program, which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Launch Alliance
United Launch Alliance (ULA), legally United Launch Alliance, LLC, is an American spacecraft launch service provider that manufactures and operates a number of rocket vehicles that are capable of launching spacecraft into orbits around Earth, and to other bodies in the Solar System and beyond. The company, which is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Space and Boeing Defense, Space & Security, was formed in December 2006. Launch customers of the United Launch Alliance include the Department of Defense (DoD), NASA, and other organizations. ULA provides launch services using expendable launch systems Delta IV Heavy and Atlas V, and until 2018 the medium-lift Delta II. The Atlas, Delta IV Heavy and the recently retired Delta IV launch systems have launched payloads including weather, telecommunications, and national security satellites, scientific probes and orbiters. ULA also launches commercial satellites. , the company is developing the Vulcan Centaur, a successor t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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