![]() He and others argued that NASA allowing its personnel to fly on suborbital vehicles would be an endorsement of their safety that would help companies. ![]() “It’s really this industry, human spaceflight, wherever it takes place, and furthering that and ensuring that it is both viable and safe.” “Flying NASA civil servants is really not the primary objective,” he said. Gerace, though, said that SubC has broader goals. Instead, SubC is focused now on enabling flights by NASA civil servants, such as scientists and engineers conducting research, on suborbital vehicles. Neither Blue Origin nor Virgin Galactic, the two companies that operate commercial suborbital vehicles capable of carrying people, require those on board to wear pressure suits. NASA astronauts wear pressure suits during dynamic phases of flight on commercial crew vehicles, including launch, reentry and docking and undocking from the station, but do not wear them for other phases of flight. They felt these vehicles, which did not incorporate pressure suits, did not fit those needs.” Any kind of training they have they really want to have in pressure suits. “The astronaut corps flies in pressure suits. These vehicles don’t really meet those needs,” he said. “The original intent was to provide training opportunities for our astronaut corps. He said that NASA was no longer focusing on using SubC to fly astronauts for training or research. “One tends to think this is about flying our NASA crew in space. “Our name is a little bit of a misnomer these days,” said Chris Gerace. NASA followed that up with a request for information on the qualification process in June 2020, but there had been few updates on SubC since then.Īt the 2023 edition of the conference last week, the manager of SubC at NASA said the emphasis of the effort had changed. That would require, he said then, a certification process of some kind for suborbital vehicles, likely a subset of requirements NASA had established for commercial orbital vehicles. The effort would be analogous to the Commercial Crew program to develop vehicles to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. A NASA program originally intended to fly astronauts on commercial suborbital vehicles has evolved into a broader effort to enable flights by agency personnel and supporting the nascent industry.Īt the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in March 2020, then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced a new effort, later called Suborbital Crew or SubC, to allow NASA astronauts to fly on commercial suborbital vehicles for training or to conduct research. Its stated aim is to “tap into the limitless resources of space and enable the movement of damaging industries into space to preserve Earth, humanity’s blue origin.BROOMFIELD, Colo. The company was founded by Bezos with a vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth, according to Blue Origin. ![]() The most important part of that drive is to help fund the development of New Glenn. It’s estimated that he’s so far invested at least $8 billion of his own wealth, but a key part of Blue Origin’s business plan is to take revenues from government contracts. ![]() ![]() MORE FROM FORBES The Top 10 Most Exciting Space Missions To Watch In 2023, Ranked By Jamie Carter Who is Blue Origin?įounded in 2000 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin has been funded solely by Bezos himself. The next launch window after that is January 2025. The plan is for VLF to be launched on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from New Zealand in May 2023 for arrival in October 2023. The short mission will see a probe inserted into the planet’s hot, thick cloud layers to spend just five minutes searching for signs of habitable conditions. Rocket Lab already has its CAPSTONE mission at the Moon while it’s also developing the first privately-funded science mission to Venus called Venus Life Finder (VLF). Nominally a competitor to Blue Origin, New Zealand’s Rocket Lab has the Electron rocket, but it’s too small to launch ESCAPADE. The mission will also support crewed exploration programs like Artemis through improved solar storm prediction. In this science phase the spacecraft will collect data to help planetary scientists understand the structure, composition, variability and dynamics of Mars’ unique hybrid magnetosphere. It will consist of two Rocket Lab Photon spacecraft that will cruise to Mars over 11 months before going into elliptical orbits around the red planet. (July 14, 2022) Blue Origin What is ESCAPADE?Ī mission to study Mars’ magnetosphere, ESCAPADE is part of the low budget NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program. New Glenn's second stage tank at Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral, FL. ![]()
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