WASHINGTON – Astrobotic has signed a contract with SpaceX for the launch of its Griffin lunar lander with a NASA lunar rover on a Falcon Heavy in 2023.
Astrobotic announced on April 13 that it has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy for its Griffin Mission 1 lunar landing mission, which will deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) spacecraft to the moon’s south pole at the end of 2023. Astrobotic has’ A NASA competition won by the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program last year to transport VIPER on its lunar lander in Griffin.
‘Getting to the moon’s is not just about building a spacecraft, but having a complete mission solution. “SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy completes our Griffin Mission 1 solution by providing a proven launch vehicle that can transport us to the moon on our orbit,” said Daniel Gillies, director of Griffin Mission 1 at Astrobotic, in a statement.
Astrobotic did not want to disclose the terms of the agreement. SpaceX publishes a $ 90 million list price on its Falcon Heavy website, although some government contracts for Falcon Heavy missions have been significantly more expensive. Astrobotic also did not want to identify what other launch options are being considered for the mission.
VIPER is a NASA mission to investigate permanently shaded regions of craters at the lunar south pole that may contain deposits of water ice that could serve as resources for future crew voyages. It is designed to work 100 days after landing.
NASA originally planned to launch VIPER in 2022, with a mission cost of $ 250 million. However, NASA has postponed the launch until late 2023 to allow more time to extend VIPER’s mission life from 14 to 100 days. This in turn increased the cost of VIPER to $ 433.5 million, NASA announced in March.
VIPER is the largest mission forming part of CLPS, a NASA initiative to purchase payload accommodation on commercial lunar landers. Astrobotic won a $ 199.5 million task order in June 2020 to deliver VIPER to the lunar surface on its Griffin lander.
Most landers flying CLPS missions selected so far will be launched on SpaceX. Intuitive machines, which have won CLPS task orders for two landing missions, will launch on Falcon 9 vehicles each later this year and in 2022. Masten Space Systems has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for its XL-1 landing mission, which is a CLPS award for a late 2022 mission.
Astrobotic will launch its first CLPS mission, a smaller lunar lander called Peregrine, during the inaugural launch of the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, which is currently planned for late this year. Firefly Aerospace, which won the latest CLPS award in January, has not yet selected a launcher for its Blue Ghost lander, but has noted that the lander is too large to launch on the company’s Alpha rocket.
The Astrobotic contract contributes to a growing backlog for the Falcon Heavy, which has not flown since the Space Test Program (STP) 2 mission in June 2019. The next Falcon Heavy launch is not expected earlier than July, with a classified payload for the US. Space force. Another Falcon Heavy launch for the Space Force is scheduled for late this year.
SpaceX has won NASA contracts for Falcon Heavy, including the launch of the Psyche mission, the metal asteroid of the same name in 2022, and in February the first two elements of the Moon Gateway in 2024. Falcon Heavy is also the forerunner for the ongoing competition to launch the Europa Clipper mission after NASA concluded that the mission could not start on the Space Launch System according to the original plan.
Gillies, the Astrobotic driver of Griffin Mission 1, previously worked at SpaceX, where he was a mission integrator for the STP-2 Falcon Heavy launch. “Having previously sat on the other side of the table as a former SpaceX mission manager, I’m well aware of SpaceX’s capabilities and processes and am excited to work with SpaceX on a mission again,” he said. he said.