posted 10-10-2018 07:28 AM               

Draper Unveils Team for NASA's Next Moonshot

Draper, a company with a heritage in space exploration dating to the Apollo moon landings, announced today its team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract. Under the proposal, the team will support NASA in the delivery of small rovers and instruments to meet lunar science and exploration needs, advance development of lunar landers for human missions and conduct more research on the moon's surface ahead of a human return.

Draper, as prime contractor, will lead a team that brings extensive and highly relevant experience in space, with partners that include General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, ispace and Spaceflight Industries.

Seamus Tuohy, principal director of space systems at Draper, remarked, "Draper is proud of its long-standing relationship with NASA, and is excited to further strengthen that partnership with a team that will provide commercial lunar transportation and re-establish the moon as a destination for future human spaceflight. As the nation prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo lunar landing, Draper is excited to partner once again with NASA to go to the moon, this time joined by a dream team of space industry leaders."

NASA announced its CLPS program in December 2017 and invited commercial partners to form teams to bid on the project. At the time the space agency said it is returning to the moon and to destinations farther into the solar system with commercial and international partners as part of an overall agency Exploration Campaign in support of Space Policy Directive 1.

In accordance with the terms of the proposal, Draper will provide payload operations and the guidance, navigation and control systems for the lunar lander, as well as overall management and coordination of the team; General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems is responsible for carrying out the lunar lander manufacturing, assembly, integration and testing in the United States; ispace will act as the design agent for the lunar lander and mission operations, as well as provide high-frequency rideshare opportunities; and Spaceflight Industries Inc. is responsible for launch services including integration, mission management, launch and range documentation and pre- and post-operations.

Above: The Artemis-7 derives its name from the Greek goddess of the moon and twin sister of Apollo. The 7 signifies Draper's seventh lunar landing.

"We have decades of experience manufacturing complex systems and components supporting a variety of critical programs and multi-year, multi-customer, and multi-contractor teaming environments," stated Scott Forney, president of General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems. "As a proud member of this highly qualified international team, we look forward to applying our manufacturing and satellite design expertise to deliver a CLPS spacecraft supporting NASA's next mission to the moon."

"NASA's CLPS is a very important program that paves the way for establishing a commercial lunar transportation market. We are very much looking forward to supporting NASA in that effort," said ispace's founder and chief executive, Takeshi Hakamada, who was inspired to start ispace while studying Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. "We are honored that Draper selected our lunar lander technology as the most capable design and to join this truly outstanding team led by Draper, which brings together the talent and capabilities necessary to support NASA's return to the Moon."

Curt Blake, president of Spaceflight, said, "We're focused on getting our customers' spacecraft into orbit in the most expeditious, cost-effective manner possible. We are honored and looking forward to working on this NASA moonshot with the team."

In support of the national interest, NASA has mandated that the prime contractor provide a CLPS that uses domestic end products for all space transportation vehicles required for performance of the contract. Draper and the team prepared the proposal with that goal in mind and to satisfy the requirements of NASA's Domestic Source Certification.

The Draper team named the lander Artemis-7 in honor of Artemis, the Greek goddess of the Moon and Apollo's twin sister, and 7 to signify Draper's seventh lunar landing.

posted 07-21-2022 04:40 PM               

NASA Selects Draper to Fly Research to Far Side of Moon

NASA has awarded Draper of Cambridge, Massachusetts a contract to deliver Artemis science investigations to the Moon in 2025. The commercial delivery is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative under Artemis.

Above: An illustration of Draper’s SERIES-2 lunar lander, which will deliver science and technology payloads to the Moon for NASA in 2025. (Draper)

Draper will receive $73 million for the contract, and is responsible for end-to-end delivery services, including payload integration, delivery from Earth to the surface of the Moon, and payload operations. This award is the eighth surface delivery task award issued to a CLPS vendor.

"This lunar surface delivery to a geographic region on the Moon that is not visible from Earth will allow science to be conducted at a location of interest but far from the first Artemis human landing missions," said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Understanding geophysical activity on the far side of the Moon will give us a deeper understanding of our solar system and provide information to help us prepare for Artemis astronaut missions to the lunar surface."

The experiments riding on Draper's SERIES-2 lander are headed to Schrödinger Basin, a large lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon, close to the lunar South Pole. This interesting geological site is about 200 miles in diameter. The outer ring of the basin is made up of impact melt meteorites and the inner ring is known for its smooth floor deposits that may be a combination of both impact melt and volcanic material.

"The payload delivery location is a first for us. Operations from the far side of the Moon will help improve how we track activities from this location to address scientific goals – all while we gather data from the payloads," said Chris Culbert, CLPS program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The vendor-provided services will prepare for future, more complex lunar surface operations."

Schrödinger Basin is one of the youngest impact basins on the lunar surface whose impact uplifted deep crust and upper mantle of the Moon in its peak ring. Later, the inner basin was the site of a large volcanic eruption. Scientists hope to study the thermal and geophysical properties of the lunar interior as well as electric and magnetic properties in a landing location shielded from Earth's electromagnetic fields.

• Two of the three investigations selected for this flight are part of NASA's Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) call for proposals.

  Draper will deliver the three investigations that will collectively weigh about 209 pounds (95 kilograms) in mass and include the Farside Seismic Suite (FSS), which aims to return NASA's first lunar seismic data from the far side of the Moon. This new data could help scientists better understand tectonic activity on this region of the Moon, reveal how often the lunar far side is impacted by small meteorites, and provide new information on the internal structure of the Moon. The instrument consists of the two most sensitive seismometers ever built for spaceflight.

  FSS is one of two PRISM selections. It is funded through NASA in collaboration with the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) – the French Space Agency – and is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

• The Lunar Interior Temperature and Materials Suite (LITMS), also a PRISM selection, is a suite of two instruments: the Lunar Instrumentation for Thermal Exploration with Rapidity, a subsurface heat-flow probe and pneumatic drill; and the Lunar Telluric Currents, an electric field instrument. This payload suite aims to investigate the heat flow and subsurface electrical conductivity structure of the lunar interior in Schrödinger Basin. The combination of these measurements is a way to resolve thermal and compositional structure of the surface of the Moon.

  LITMS is funded by NASA and is led by the Southwest Research Institute.

• The Lunar Surface ElectroMagnetics Experiment (LuSEE), which will make comprehensive measurements of electromagnetic phenomena on the surface of the Moon. LuSEE uses DC electric and magnetic field measurements to study the conditions that control the electrostatic potential of the lunar surface, which, in turn, plays a controlling role in dust transport. LuSEE also uses plasma wave measurements to characterize the lunar ionosphere and the interaction of the solar wind and magnetospheric plasma with the lunar surface and crustal magnetic fields. In addition, this payload will make sensitive radio frequency measurements to measure solar and planetary radio emissions.

  LuSEE is funded by NASA in collaboration with CNES, and is led by University of California, Berkeley's Space Science Laboratory.

Multiple commercial deliveries continue to be part of NASA's plans at the Moon. Future payloads delivered with CLPS could include more science experiments, including technology demonstrations that support for the agency's Artemis missions.

posted 09-28-2023 11:01 AM               

ispace-U.S. Provides Updates on Mission 3

In 2022, ispace–U.S. joined a team led by Draper Laboratory to deliver a suite of three NASA-sponsored science payloads and numerous commercial payloads to the far-side of the moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. As the lunar lander design agent on Team Draper, ispace–U.S. will leverage its APEX 1.0 lander for the CP-12 far side lunar mission.

Following the transition from the Series 2 lander to the APEX 1.0 lander, the launch of Mission 3 has been rescheduled from 2025 to 2026. The updated schedule enables Team Draper and ispace–U.S. to accommodate sensitive payloads by harnessing APEX 1.0's enhanced capabilities for Mission 3, which is targeting a technically challenging landing location on the far side of the Moon. Additionally, the updated schedule will provide ispace–U.S flexibility to absorb experienced procurement delays for some long-lead items.

ispace–U.S. continues to make steady progress on Mission 3 and has completed its Mission Operations Preliminary Design Review (PDR), a milestone that marks the conclusion of all PDRs for the APEX 1.0 lander. The company anticipates completing Mission 3's next milestone, Critical Design Review (CDR), not later than the fiscal year end of March 2024.