LAS VEGAS -- Three of NASA’s top officials arrived at the Consumer Electronics Show  in Las Vegas this week to give attendees a message: We’re heading back to the Moon in 2024 – and we’ll need help from the commercial sector to do it.

In a presentation at CES, Kira Blackwell, Jeff DeWit, and Dennis Andrucyk showcased upcoming missions to inform the industry crowd of opportunities to partner up.

“Now space is a team sport,” said Andrucyk, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. “We can enable all these missions through collaboration – with industry, with academia, and with international partners.”

Congress recently approved $22 billion of funding for NASA  , which included $600 million for lunar lander work. Eighty-five percent of that amount goes out to the private sector, said DeWit, NASA’s Chief Financial Officer.

A mission like Artemis  – a return to the Moon – will require the delivery of all kinds of payloads from Earth, including robots and eventually humans. To support the transport, NASA created a program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services  .

Through CLPS, a collection of 14 industry partners are able to bid on agency proposals. New members, added in November of 2019, include Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation, SpaceX, and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.

The team effort represents a new business model, according to the NASA speakers at CES.

“We’re putting our money where our mouth is and helping those commercial companies spin out capabilities so that there’s a very viable lunar exploration market in the future,” said Andrucyk.

Another lunar need: If NASA wants to go to Mars, astronauts will have to stop at the Moon for fuel.

The Moon has millions of tons of water ice at its poles. Can that hydrogen and oxygen be converted into energy for the spacecraft?

“If we can refuel on the Moon and not have to take all our fuel there, that drastically changes the vehicles we take, and it drastically changes the amount of science we take,” said DeWit. “The technology doesn’t exist to do that, but if you figure that out, you’re going to make a lot of money.”

In the Apollo days, NASA built, owned, and operated every piece of technology that brought astronauts to the Moon. Now, the model is reversed, and NASA is increasingly a customer of the private sector.

Collaborating with industry allows the agency to still work with the best engineers in the world who no longer head straight to Kennedy Space Center after college.

Rather than compete with the external space firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin, why not collaborate?

“It’s hard for us to get that top engineering student unless they know and love NASA,” said DeWit. “We still get them in our wider NASA umbrella by having them work with us through commercial partnerships.”

The CES presentation demonstrated that NASA’s needs go beyond the Moon. The agency’s three panelists spent much of their presentation yesterday showcasing missions on the horizon, including the 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope  and the landing of an octocopter on Saturn’s moon by 2036  .

This is an illustration of the Dragonfly Dragonfly rotorcraft-lander. Set for launch in 2026 and arrival on Saturn in 2034, the drone will search for signs of life on the planet.

“We have about 100 missions going on right now,” said Andrucyk. “Every one of those need transportation to orbit.”

You don’t have to want to be the astronaut to collaborate either, said Blackwood, who, as Program Executive for NASA iTech, is responsible for finding problem-solving Earth technologies that can be used in space.

“A lot of the companies we see through our program are developing technologies that enable a spacecraft to fly more efficiently or have better fuel efficiency or propulsion systems,” said Blackwell.

Although NASA may not be every top engineer’s first stop out of school anymore and has dealt with reduced budgets and the closing of its shuttle program, the team at CES assured the crowd that missions are alive and well – and so is industry collaboration.

“It’s a really exciting time to be with NASA again,” said DeWit. “Right now we’re at a time of extreme growth and new programs and projects.”

What do you think? Share your questions and comments below.

Topics:
Aeronautics Aerospace Machinery Mechanical Components

More From SAE Media Group

    Transcript

    00:00:05 Hello. I'm NASA associate administrator for science Thomas Zurbuchen. NASA is going to the moon with the Artemis program and American companies of all sizes want to help our nation make its next giant leap. It is my pleasure to announce the companies who are joining the pool of NASA industry partners who will help our nation enable the first woman and next man to reach the lunar surface by 2024 and conduct significant science investigations. Through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, we're sending science and technology demonstrations to the lunar surface beginning in 2021. These payloads will help us study the Moon and prove technologies that we'll need to eventually travel to Mars. Today five new companies join this great initiative.

    00:00:59 I want to congratulate the new CLPS participants: Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation, SpaceX and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. We look forward to working with all of you. Together, we are going. it's great to be going back to the Moon. An opportunity like this is the reason why many of us got into the space industry. Blue Origin will be offering its Blue Moon lander, the one that we've been working on for several years. With its BE 7 engine that we've been test- firing at Marshall Space Flight Center, to the kilowatts of power it will provide to help it survive noon or night, to it's flexible payload deck that will support everything from instruments to rovers. We're confident that this lander

    00:01:48 can support all of our needs from exploration to science as America returns to the surface of the Moon, this time to stay. We're delighted to have the opportunity to participate in NASA CLPS program and to provide landers and deliver payloads to the Moon's surface. Over the last sixty years, NASA and its partners that created the opportunities we have today to go back to the Moon to go onto Mars and beyond. Thanks to NASA and all who made this possible. Hi. Steve Lindsey here. I'm senior vice president of strategy for SNC Space Systems business area. SNC is thrilled to have been selected for Commercial Lunar Payload Services to support Artemis missions and the next stage of lunar

    00:02:35 exploration. For CLPS, we'll be applying experience and knowledge from our lunar gateway programs, satellites and cargo resupply services for Space Station through our Dream Chaser spacecraft. CLPS is an amazing opportunity to advance science, exploration and learn more about the lunar surface. Thank you NASA for your trust. SNC is proud to partner with you again and we can't wait to get working on CLPS and many other programs. Hey everybody we are super excited that NASA selected us for the CLPS program. I think starship is going to be an extraordinary help and benefit, deliver both science, technology and even cargo to the lunar surface. Starship is a great vehicle. It's fully reusable, so not only can it take a lot to the surface of the

    00:03:18 Moon, but it's also quite affordable. Thanks to NASA we are the company that we are today and we're really thrilled to continue the partnership on the CLPS program. We look forward to working with our partners and apply flight proven expertise to design, develop and operate a lunar lander to the Moon's surface. We continue to value our relationship and we'd like to thank NASA for including us in such an instrumental project.