NASA mulls commercial rocket to moon
As construction of NASA’s heavy-lift rocket continues to face delays, Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Wednesday the agency might launch the Orion spacecraft around the moon on the back of a commercial vehicle.
The first launch of Orion — the spacecraft being built to take humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972 — on the Space Launch System rocket was scheduled to happen by June 2020.
But the agency this month acknowledged that timing is no longer feasible, signaling yet another delay for the problematic rocket.
“I think we, as an agency, need to stick to our commitments,” Bridenstine testified at a Wednesday hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. “If we tell you and others that we’re going to launch in June 2020 around the moon, I think we should, and I think we can get it done.”
Despite its numerous problems, NASA for years has defended the Space Launch System rocket, saying it was a necessary backbone of their human exploration portfolio. The rocket was a brainchild of President Barack Obama’s administration and initially was supposed to launch in 2017.
So, the kind of paradigm shift Bridenstine suggested Wednesday is a good sign, said Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website devoted to space news.
“I think this is recognition that in order to achieve the goals the White House has set for NASA, some creative thinking is required,” Cowing said.
President Donald Trump’s administration wants to send U.S. astronauts back to the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars — with the help of international and commercial partners. The goal is to put humans on the lunar surface again by 2028.
Calling on companies
Wednesday marked the first time the idea of launching Orion on anything other than SLS has been publicly floated.
Bridenstine admitted he is unsure what commercial rockets would be used for this endeavor — or how much it would cost. He told committee members he would have a better idea in a few weeks.
“I tasked the agency with figuring out how to make that an objective,” he said. Cost “is another discussion, but we might need to request help from the Congress.”
If NASA flies the first Orion mission aboard a commercial rocket, Bridenstine said, two rockets would actually be used.
One would launch the Orion capsule into low Earth orbit, he said, while another would launch a fully-fueled upper stage — which provides the propulsion needed to throw Orion around the moon. Then, the two would dock and continue on the mission around the moon, he added.
The Orion capsule does not have hardware for docking, he said, so that would need to be added.
“Here’s the glory of the United States of America,” Bridenstine said. “We have amazing capability that exists right now that we can use off the shelf in order to accomplish this objective.”
NASA has two missions scheduled for the Orion-SLS team. The first Orion spacecraft mission, Exploration Mission-1, is meant to go up without a crew.
The second, Exploration Mission-2, will launch humans around the moon and is supposed to fly no later than 2023.
Bridenstine’s comments raise the question: If the agency sends the first mission up successfully on commercial rockets, will the second mission pivot to do the same?
New mission for SLS?
Cowing is confident the SLS rocket will never take humans into space. Instead, he thinks it will be used for cargo missions or, perhaps, unmanned missions to other planets. “I’m sure the rocket will work, it’s just taking forever to build,” Cowing said.
But the White House signaled Monday that isn’t the plan — at least not for now.
In the budget proposal for fiscal year 2020, Trump suggested postponing an upgrade to the rocket’s performance.
Under the Trump proposal, NASA would continue with the initial version instead, while the agency would remove from the rocket’s manifest a mission to study Jupiter’s moon, Europa.
That mission, called Europa Clipper, would instead launch on a commercial rocket. Budget documents state that this will save the U.S. $700 million.
The upgrade to the rocket’s performance also was important to launch the different elements of the mini-space station NASA wants to build orbiting the moon, called the Lunar Orbital-Platform Gateway.
With this delay, those elements will instead be sent into space on “competitively procured, vehicles, complementing crew transport flights on the SLS and Orion,” budget documents state
Boeing was awarded a contract in 2012 to build two Space Launch System cores for NASA, one for the first, uncrewed Orion flight and one for the flight that would carry Americans around the moon.
At that time, the uncrewed flight was expected to launch in 2017. But that timeline didn’t work out.
So far, the rocket has cost NASA about $12 billion. Still, Bridenstine vehemently defended the rocket.
“I want to start with a point of emphasis: SLS is the largest rocket ever built in American history and it’s a critical piece of what needs to be built,” Bridenstine said. “But SLS is struggling to meet schedule ... and now we are understanding better how difficult the project is and that it’s going to take additional time.”