NASA Reveals NEW Lunar Starship!

on today's episode NASA reveals a surprise new starship design SpaceX confirms their plan for orbital refilling and emis Engineers have a problem with the Orion Capsule NASA is expanding their roster of moon Landers the agency revealed their next big project with an April 19th press release showing off two new vehicles heavy cargo variants of both the Starship human Landing system and the blue moonlander from Blue origin NASA has revealed that they activated an option in the two companies contracts back in November of 20123 that requested these new variants of the Starship hls and the blue moon to be built specifically to FY extremely heavy loads to the Moon without the aid of a crew what kind of payload might NASA have in mind here stick with me the briefing details that the new variants will need to be able to land approximately 26,000 to 33 ,000 lb or 12 to 15 metric tons of payload on the lunar surface and that both vehicles need to be ready to go no earlier than the Artemis 7 Mission which is currently planned for September of 2031 that's a long time to wait but aside from the packed Artemis Mission schedule it's easy to see why these new variants might take some time to develop just look at the renders the new starship Lander is immediately a bit different from previous renders it's lost the windows that show show a crew cabin a reminder that these vehicles will both be fully automated but the focal point is very clearly the new cargo crane it's much bigger a much larger section of the ship is shown opening and supporting a massive Crane That is offloading what appears to be early renders of a pressurized Rover concept like this one being developed for NASA by the Japanese Space Administration Jaa and the automotive company Toyota NASA's new agreement with Japan is set to usher in a New Era of collaboration between the two space programs this will include Japanese astronauts landing on the moon and operating the lunar Gateway station in return Japan will be lending its resources to high-profile NASA Endeavors like their dragonfly mission to Titan and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Japan's primary contribution to Artemis will be a pressurized lunar rover that will be able to accommodate two astronauts for up to 30 days as they Traverse the area near the lunar South Pole NASA currently plans to use the pressurized Rover on Artemis 7 and subsequent missions over an approximate 10-year lifespan the deal is that if Japan can build the vehicle NASA will figure out how to get it on the moon if for whatever reason the bulked up Starship isn't enough we also have the Blue Moon cargo render featuring a robust new payload Carriage which looks like it can carry at least one of these massive Rovers at the top of the Lander during transport lowering down once safely on the surface these renders are early drafts of course but they get the point across NASA will need huge loads of heavy cargo to be delivered to the Moon in support of their ground Crews Starship and blue moon are the two Landers NASA has decided to back and so they're the ones that will be getting the funding to try and pull this off which is good news for both of these companies what's even better is that both vehicles seem to already have the capacity they need for this Mission starship's current ability to push payload Mass to low earth orbit could be as high as 150 tons by the time they are fully operational so as SpaceX gets their inorbit refueling process working they could very easily transport almost 10 times what NASA requires more on that in a second and even though Blue Moon is smaller it can reportedly haul at least 20 tons or 30 if they use the Expendable version so that means NASA's primary and redundant Landers can both handle this job all they have to do is prove it and considering both companies have emis missions with the crude versions of their vehicles years before NASA's new deadline this doesn't seem like a very tall order accessing the internet from space is going to be a bit complicated so we'll want to make sure that we have the best web browser available on our Starship and for that I choose Opera Opera is the most feature-rich internet browsing experience I have ever had and that's interesting to me because I've never really given much thought to the features of a web browser aside aside from you know browsing the web but when you see what Opera has to offer you won't be able to go back personally I've fallen in love with workspaces to enhance my productivity in the office using the Opera sidebar I can quickly toggle between dedicated spaces for each of the video projects that I'm working on and I can just as easily flip to a clean space for when I'm not working on anything at all using workspaces in conjunction with using Opera tab Islands to group and organize my browser tabs is keeping my online workflow more organized and productive than ever before I can even use Opera's integrated AI named Arya to help with some quick fact checking and number conversions switching browsers has never been so easy with just one click I was able to import all of my old bookmarks and get straight to work of course the best feature of all is that Opera is totally free to use and shockingly easy to get set up so take my advice and give Opera a try for yourself I really think you're going to like it NASA has just confirmed that that SpaceX is on track to complete an upcoming demonstration of their vehicle to vehicle propellant transfer technology in 2025 during the March 14th test flight of their starship prototype rocket SpaceX attempted the very first tech demonstration of inspace fuel transfer a procedure that is a requirement for the company to move forward with their lunar missions for NASA this test involved moving 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen from the header tank at the forward tip of Starship to a main tank with within the midbody this reportedly took place 24 minutes and 31 seconds into the flight but not much else is known about the status of the procedure afterwards and that's fair Starship continued on the flight and was lost during re-entry so the company had more on its mind than just this one particular test but that changed on April 26th when a NASA administrator confirmed that the transfer was performed flawlessly speaking at the NASA advisory council's human exploration and op oper ation committee the NASA Deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars program said that while the results of the test are still being looked at the propellant was successfully transferred from one tank to another and SpaceX is on schedule for the next step which would be a fuel transfer between two ships in Space the idea is to launch a Target first a Starship to be caught by the Chaser ship which will intercept the target automatically line itself up dock transfer fuel and then break away for a re-entry burn this would obviously require the launch of two ships in Rapid succession something that SpaceX is busy making themselves ready for a second launch Tower and olm have been spotted being pieced together at the bach chica site for months now but that's only one piece of the puzzle both vehicles will need to have active docking mechanisms and automatic navigation systems to manage the delicate procedure this is currently the step that SpaceX seems to be beyond the success of the transfer procedure during if3 has allowed the company to focus on hitting their 2025 date for a full demonstration which again is something that NASA needs to see before clearing Starship for any lunar operations Artemis 3 the mission slated to use a human Landing system crude variant is still on the schedule for 2026 currently and it's clear that SpaceX doesn't want to delay that any more than it's already been success so far is good news well probably see other Starship test flights before the big refueling test the ship needs to iron out a few Kinks like sayfe fre entry and Landing for instance but that just gives the engineers more time to work up the docking system mechanisms and other Hardware they'll need to pull this off Orion has a problem and NASA still isn't sure what's causing it much less how to fix it NASA's advisory Council committee meeting was held on April 26th and Artemis mission administrator Amit chhatria told the assembled members that a heat shield anomaly found on the emis 1 Orion capsule had not yet been fully investigated but the team was closing in on the root cause during the 2021 Artemis 1 Mission the uncrewed Space Capsule made its descent back to Earth streaking through the atmosphere before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at first glance everything appeared to be fine but once the inspection team got to the heat shield NASA realized something was off Orion's heat shield had burned up unevenly and sure the pot itself had survived the flight trajectory had held up well and by all accounts had a crew been on board they would have also been fine but heat shields are tricky things and after the shuttle explosions NASA pays particularly close attention to even the smallest anomalies so an uneven heat shield Charing pattern is something NASA is worried about the problem is that they haven't been able to figure out why the heat shield didn't burn up the way their simulations predicted that it would especially when those same simulations lined up pretty well with everything else that happened the heat shield used on Orion is made of something called avat which is an ablative material designed to heat up and Flake off rather than transferring heat to the main vehicle the capsule's Steep trajectory on its way back from the Moon meant that it was screaming back into the atmosphere at 40,000 kmph and heating up to 2,00 76° C the problem with this kind of stress is that it can be very difficult to pinpoint something as subtle as an uneven burd reportedly Artemis Engineers have been making smaller scale tests on physical models in Wind tunnels and arcjet labs to find the cause but it takes time the most likely culprit seems to be the skip re-entry maneuver that was used to slow and more accurately positioned Orion for its splash down the maneuver itself was a success but but it's not something NASA has used much before Artemis 1 so the team has been testing different flight profiles to see what works and what doesn't ultimately this is about confirming that the material will hold up an uneven wear pattern isn't a big deal if the heat shield ultimately performs like it's designed to but you can bet that NASA wants to make extra sure of that before they put their astronauts in for Artemis 2 and other missions where the flight profile will mean that the Pod will be returning home home at higher speeds replacing the whole heat shield system is a big effort and NASA would understandably like to keep what they have ultimately it's down to the numbers like chhatria said during the meeting when we stitch it all together we'll either have flight rationale or we won't you can't force physics to change for budgetary reasons so let's hope this burn pattern isn't a big deal and the team can move on to repairing other systems in time for NASA to send humans back to the moon in 2025

Channel: The Space Race

Views: 80,797

Keywords: spacex, starship, nasa, moon, moon landing, artemis 3, artemis three, lunar starship, starship update, lunar starship update, human landing system, nasa hls, starship hls, starship launch, spacex moon landing, moon rover, lunar rover, japan lunar rover, toyota moon rover, jaxa moon, jaxa moon rover, jaxa lunar rover, lunar cargo, starship moon, starship rover, starship refuel, starship refilling, orbital refuelling, orbital refilling, artemis 7, nasa artemis 7

Id: 3WEiZ_SHf_M

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024