Sunday, April 28, 2024

NASA has revealed new designs of lunar cargo landers from SpaceX & Blue Origin

As we know NASA has contracted SpaceX and Blue Origin to provide landing systems to take astronauts to the Moon’s surface from lunar orbit, beginning with SpaceX's Lunar Starship for Artemis III mission.

On April 19, 2024, NASA announced it has asked SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop cargo versions of their human lunar landers as an option under their existing contracts. These cargo variants are expected to land approximately 12 to 15 metric tons (26,000 to 33,000 pounds) of payload on the lunar surface and be in service no earlier than the Artemis VII mission. In the announcement NASA shared the latest official renders of lunar cargo landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin:
SpaceX's Lunar cargo Starship
SpaceX's Lunar cargo Starship
Blue Origin's Lunar cargo Lander
Blue Origin's Lunar cargo Lander

Saturday, April 13, 2024

SpaceX Starship update 2024

On April 4th at Starbase, Texas SpaceX CEO and lead designer Elon Musk provided an unannounced update of SpaceX's Starship architecture. Here are slides and animations from his presentation.
Full presentation:

Slides from the presentation

Starship v1, v2 and v3 specifications:
SpaceX Starship update 2024 - Starship v1, v2 & v3 specifications
Thrust comparison of Raptor v1, v2 and v3:
SpaceX Starship update 2024 - Raptor engine v1, v2 & v3 specifications
First Mechazilla launch tower pairs at Starbase, Texas and Cape Canaveral, Florida:
SpaceX Starship update 2024 - Mechazilla Launch tower pair