Blue Origin will attempt to land a prototype of its Blue Moon Mark 1 vehicle on the moon’s South Pole as early as this year. This was announced by the company’s senior vice president John Couluris.
Blue Origin is currently developing two vehicles designed to fly to the Moon as part of the Artemis program. They were designated Mark 1 and Mark 2. The Mark 1 is a “truck”. It has a single BE-7 engine powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and is designed to deliver 3.9 tons of cargo to any point on the lunar surface.
According to John John Couluris, the first flight of the Mark 1 will take place as early as this year. Assembly of the vehicle is almost complete. It is expected to be transported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston in about six weeks for testing in a thermal vacuum chamber. Once completed, it will be flown to Cape Canaveral, after which it will begin preparing for launch.
A New Glenn rocket will be used to launch the Mark 1. The main task of the mission will be to test the technology and practice precise landing on the Moon — according to the designers’ plan, Mark I will have to land within 10 meters from the planned point at the South Pole of the Moon. The spacecraft will also carry some payloads from NASA and commercial organizations, including an experiment to measure the effects of the BE-7 jet on the lunar surface.
The success of the mission will be an important step toward the development of a larger Mark 2 vehicle that can take four people to the Moon and keep them there for four months. Blue Origin recently unveiled an updated design for its space “tanker” capable of delivering up to 110 tons of fuel to near-lunar orbit. It will be used to refuel the Mark 2.
Currently, Mark 2 is tied to the Artemis V mission, whose launch is scheduled for 2030. However, it is worth remembering that the current U.S. administration is about to abandon the use of the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft. This creates considerable uncertainty about the U.S. lunar program and the timetable for upcoming missions.
According to Aviationweek
