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NASA chief urges new ride for Blue Moon. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket was supposed to launch the company’s first lunar lander, Blue Moon Mark 1, sometime this fall. The Blue Moon test mission is an important precursor for Blue Origin’s future human-rated Moon lander for the Artemis program, and NASA is eager to see it fly. The rocket’s explosion on the launch pad last week makes a launch on New Glenn this year unachievable. NASA now wants to find an alternative launcher for the first of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon demo missions, Spaceflight Now reports. In an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described a “whole of government response” to the May 28 incident with the New Glenn. “We are also decoupling the lander from the launch vehicle and the pad itself,” he said.
Only one option... “NASA is laser focused on the lander because we’re laser focused on our mission to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon before 2028, and we’re going be able to keep that lander in development, progressing, 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 would like to see the launches of the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander and potentially the Blue Moon Mark 2 crewed lander move to a rocket that’s not New Glenn. For Mark 1, at least, the only realistic option is SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, but there are several technical hurdles to making that happen.
Artemis III booster segments shipped to KSC. While there is some uncertainty regarding timelines 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 eight remaining booster segments to Kennedy, joining other booster components previously shipped to the Florida launch site.
