What’s Launching to the Moon in 2022

Central to NASA’s efforts to return humans to the moon is SpaceX’s Starship, which will be used as a human lunar lander in roughly 2025. It will be the agency’s first astronaut mission to the moon’s surface since 1972. Designed as a fully reusable rocket system, Starship also stands at the center of Elon Musk’s ultimate goal of ferrying humans to Mars and will be crucial to SpaceX’s revenue-generating satellite launch business.

But first, Starship must reach orbit. That test flight, also with no people on board, could happen sometime in mid-2022.

Mr. Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, had hoped to launch Starship to orbit in 2021. But a protracted Federal Aviation Administration review of the environmental impact of SpaceX’s launch site in Texas and development delays with the company’s new Raptor engines have postponed the test flight. The F.A.A. review is expected to finish in late February and determine whether deeper environmental reviews will be necessary, or whether SpaceX can resume Starship launches.

A successful orbital test will be a key step in NASA’s moon program. Astronauts launching atop the Space Launch System inside the Orion capsule will rendezvous with and transfer to Starship above the moon to descend the rest of the way to the lunar surface. Starship would later liftoff from the moon, then transfer the astronauts back to Orion for the journey home to Earth.

NASA-Funded Moon Robots

Three robotic moon landers under a NASA program are scheduled to make their way to the lunar surface in 2022 — if development goes as planned.

Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company, and Astrobotic, based in Pittsburgh, are each aiming to send small lunar landers carrying various scientific payloads to the moon by the end of 2022. Their landers were developed under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program — part of the agency’s effort to rely on private companies for sending cargo and research instruments into space with the hopes of stimulating a commercial market.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, a six-legged cylindrical robot, is expected to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in early 2022 carrying a dozen payloads to the lunar surface. One of the instruments on board will measure the plume of lunar dirt kicked up during Nova-C’s landing, an experiment that could help engineers prevent messy lunar landings in the future. The lander will also deploy a small rover built by Spacebit, a British company. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the company could also send a second mission to the moon’s surface.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/moon-missions-nasa-2022.html