When NASA sends a rover or other technology to the moon, there is no guarantee that it will function under the gravity of the moon. On the planet, weighs only 16.5 pounds per month. However, the space agency currently has a way of giving dress rehearsals to lunar technology.
Last week, Blue Origin’s new reusable Shepherd rocket, equipped with 30 payloads from NASA and other partners, allowed the lunar gravity to penetrate for two minutes during suborbital flight. Previously, NASA could only replicate the lunar gravity for a few seconds at a time, leaving some degree of uncertainty about how the lunar payload would work.
“The long period of simulated lunar gravity, a critical test regime for NASA, is a critical test regime for NASA, is a critical test regime for NASA,” said Greg Peters, program manager for NASA’s flight opportunity program. . “It’s important to reduce the risk of innovation that may one day go to the moon.”
With a bit of help from NASA’s Flight Opportunities team, Blue Origin upgraded the Crew Capsules from New Shepard. Its reaction control system was modified to complete 11 revolutions per minute, simulating the gravity of one-seventh of the Earth.
“The more the test environment is, the better it is,” said Daniel McCullock, program executive at Flight Chance. “So we provided great support for this flight test to expand the available vehicle capabilities.”
Flight opportunities were also paid over half of the mission’s “seats,” New Shepherd’s 29th overall and 14th in the payload. One payload, the Lunar-G burning survey (Luci), is designed to study how objects fire against the moon and the moon. Other NASA experiments focus on shielding against lunar dust, buildings and excavations on the lunar surface, and investigations of lunar physics.
Other mission payloads came from Blue Origin’s Spatial Systems Business, Draper, Purdue University, and HoneyBee Robotics, part of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Honeybee’s Honey Bubble Extation Experiment (H-Bee) study how bubbles behave in the lunar liquid.
The mission also carried thousands of postcards sent by space enthusiasts through the Blue Origin club for future nonprofits.
“The ability of the new Shepherd to provide the lunar gravity environment is a very unique and valuable ability as researchers have turned to return to the moon,” says Phil, Senior Vice President of the new Shepherd Program. Joyce said. “This allows researchers to test the moon’s technology at a fraction of the cost, quickly iterate and test it again in a heavily compressed time frame.”
