Ars: Presumably that would not happen until after Artemis III?<\/p>\n
Glaze: Yeah, agreed.<\/p>\n
Ars: And with Blue Moon Mk. 1, that\u2019s launching sometime this year. You know, presumably within a few months?<\/p>\n
Glaze: I think it will launch this year.<\/p>\n
Ars: I hope so. What should we be looking for on that flight as it pertains to HLS?<\/p>\n
Glaze: I think some of their propulsion systems are going to feed forward into the guidance, navigation, and control. Their ability to land will be key. We all know that is not as easy as one might think. So that\u2019ll be key, just seeing how all the systems perform in the lunar environment.<\/p>\n
Ars: Have the companies shown a greater vigor toward executing on HLS in the last couple of months?<\/p>\n
Glaze: Yeah, in fact, I\u2019m glad you asked that. Because I think we really have seen them\u2014they\u2019re taking it very seriously. Our request to try and pull things in, to try and meet the mandate to land on the surface in 2028, I think we have seen real commitment to try to do that on both sides, from both Blue and from SpaceX, yeah, a real commitment to seeing what they can do to try and pull that in.<\/p>\n
Ars: You mentioned the ICPS [Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, currently used by the SLS rocket, of which NASA has one left] and that you\u2019re sort of still trading on whether to fly that on Artemis III. If you could save it, why would you fly it on Artemis III?<\/p>\n
Glaze: If we don\u2019t need it on Artemis III, we won\u2019t fly it because I think there\u2019s value. I think we all recognize that there would be value in having it available for Artemis IV, giving a little bit more development time for the Centaur V replacement. However, we haven\u2019t closed yet on what the Artemis III mission profile looks like and whether or not we\u2019re going to need an upper stage to get us to the right orbit.<\/p>\n
Ars: How far can the SLS core stage push it?<\/p>\n
Glaze: You know, that\u2019s a really good question. I\u2019ll have to get back with you. I don\u2019t know that I have a specific answer for you on that. I know we\u2019re looking at and considering a low-Earth orbit. But I don\u2019t know exactly what it would be. Is that an ISS orbit? Is it a little higher than ISS? We\u2019re still looking at that, and some trades in particular orbits, and then where can we get to without the upper stage.<\/p>\n
Ars: OK, you\u2019ve got a busy time ahead of you. Good luck.<\/p>\n
Glaze: Oh, you\u2019re not kidding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ars: Presumably that would not happen until after Artemis III? Glaze: Yeah, agreed. Ars: And with Blue Moon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-590138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}