OrbitBeyond
Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Aerospace |
Founded | 2018 |
Fate | Active |
Headquarters | , US |
Key people | Siba Padhi (President) Jeff Patton Jon Morse Michael Kaplan Abbas Salim |
Products | Robotic lunar landers and rovers |
Website | orbitbeyond |
Orbit Beyond, Inc., usually stylized as ORBITBeyond, is an aerospace company that builds technologies for lunar exploration. Its products include configurable delivery lunar landers with a payload capacity of up to 300 kg (660 lb), and rovers.[3]
Overview
On November 29, 2018, ORBITBeyond was selected to bid robotic lander contracts from NASA's
On May 31, 2019, NASA announced that it had selected OrbitBeyond as one of three commercial partners to deliver NASA payloads to the Moon with its Z-01 lander in 2020 and 2021. OrbitBeyond was awarded $97 million to land NASA payloads in Mare Imbrium by September 2020.[6][7] However, the company dropped out of this contract in July 2019, citing its inability to complete the missions on schedule.[8] Orbit Beyond remains a CLPS contractor eligible to bid on future contracts.[8]
Spacecraft
Axiom Research Labs (TeamIndus) | |
Country of origin | US |
---|---|
Operator | Ceres Robotics[5] |
Applications | Lunar lander |
Specifications | |
Spacecraft type | Robotic soft lander |
Dry mass | 210 kg (460 lb)[9] |
Payload capacity | 40 kg (88 lb) |
Production | |
Status | In development |
On order | 0 |
Built | 0 |
Lost | |
Engine details | |
Maximum thrust | one 440 N sixteen 22 N thrusters |
Propellant | Hydrazine |
Related spacecraft | |
Derived from | TeamIndus' HHK1 |
The company is developing two lunar landers, Z-01 and Z-02,[3] and a small rover called ECA.
Z-01
Z-01 is based on TeamIndus' lunar lander,[10] previously known as HHK1. On its maiden mission it would carry up to 40 kg of commercial payloads.[11] It features a main engine that produces 440 N, and sixteen 22 N thrusters for finer orbital maneuvers and attitude control (orientation).[12][10] Its first mission was planned to launch in Q3 2020,[11] on a Falcon 9 rocket[10][13] but the CLPS contract was cancelled by Orbit Beyond in July 2019.[8]
The mission was targeting Mare Imbrium (29.52º N 25.68º W[11]) just north of Annegrit crater.[14] The landing ellipse for this mission was approximately 2 km x 1.9 km.[15] The lander features automated hazard avoidance capabilities.[14]
One of the science payloads is the
ECA rover
Z-01 lander would deploy a micro-rover called ECA (Ek Choti si Asha, Hindi for "A Small Hope"),
Z-02
Z-02 is a larger lander concept that would carry up to 500 kg of commercial payloads.[3]
See also
- Google Lunar XPRIZE
- Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)
- Newspace
References
- ^ NASA will pay private companies up to $2.6 billion to get the US back to the Moon for the first time in nearly 50 years. Dave Mosher, MSN News. November 2018.
- ^ OrbitBeyond Teams with Team Indus, Honeybee Robotics for NASA Lunar Program Archived 2019-06-01 at the Wayback Machine. Doug Messier, Parabolic Arc. 29 November 2018.
- ^ a b c Orbit Beyond, Inc. Accessed: 29 October 2018.
- ^ "NASA Announces New Partnerships for Commercial Lunar Payload Delivery Services". NASA. 29 November 2018. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
- ^ a b "OrbitBeyond brings together a consortium for NASA CLPS RFP – OrbitBeyond". www.orbitbeyond.com. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
- ^ "NASA Selects First Commercial Moon Landing Services for Artemis". NASA. 31 May 2019.
- ^ NASA funds commercial moon landers for science, exploration. Astronomy Now. 2 June 2019.
- ^ a b c Private Company Orbit Beyond Drops Out of 2020 NASA Moon-Landing Deal. Mike Wall, Space.com. 30 July 2019.
- S2CID 256769005.
- ^ a b c Z-01 Lander. Gunter Dirk Krebs, Gunter's Space Page. Accessed on 17 June 2019.
- ^ a b c OrbitBeyond - Z-01 Accessed on 17 June 2019.
- ^ A look at the TeamIndus spacecraft that will land on the Moon. TeamIndus Blog. December 8, 2017.
- ^ NASA picks three companies to send commercial landers to the moon. Stephen Clark, Spaceflight Now. 4 June 2019.
- ^ a b TeamIndus Z-01 Moon Mission. TeamIndus. Medium, 22 June 2018.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-62410-562-3.
- ^ S2CID 254261179.
- ^ Brown students team with space exploration company on Moon mission planning. Brown University. February 25, 2019.
- ^ Requirement analysis and night survival concept for Z-01 landing mission using fuel cell. Satishchandra C Wani, Udit Shah, Adithya Kothandapani, Prateek Garg, Mrigank Sahai, Mannika Garg, Sunish Nair. Survive the Lunar Night Workshop 2018 (LPI Contrib. No. 2106)