NASA just wrapped up the highly successful Artemis II crewed mission, and the space agency is wasting no time looking toward the future. Leaders at NASA now have their sights set entirely on the next major milestones to return astronauts to the Moon. The agency currently targets the year 2028 for a full lunar landing. To reach that ambitious goal, NASA hired Blue Origin and SpaceX to design and build the massive landers needed to sustain human life on the lunar surface.
Landing on the moon costs an incredible amount of money. NASA awarded SpaceX a massive $2.9 billion contract to develop a lunar lander, and the agency gave Blue Origin a separate $3.4 billion deal. Even with those massive budgets, neither company has proven it can actually land a vehicle softly on the moon. Landing space vehicles remains an incredibly difficult task, as many recent robotic missions have crashed straight into the lunar dust.
To keep the program moving forward, Blue Origin delivered a brand new tool to NASA this week. The company handed over a full-scale prototype of the crew cabin for its Mark 2 moon lander. NASA placed this giant mock-up right inside the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The prototype stands exactly 15 feet tall and gives engineers a perfect physical replica of the living space.
NASA plans to use this 15-foot cabin for an intense series of training exercises. The space agency calls these exercises human-in-the-loop tests. Astronauts and engineers will step inside the prototype to physically touch the controls, pull the levers, and run through complete mission scenarios. They want to see exactly how real humans interact with the machine before they send it into deep space.
The crews will spend hours inside the cabin running communication checks with mission control. Astronauts will also put on their heavy spacesuits to test the room’s exact fit. They will check their gear, practice opening the hatches, and rehearse all the detailed preparations they need for a simulated moonwalk. Moving around in a bulky spacesuit requires a great deal of effort, so astronauts need to know they have enough room to work safely.
While a 15-foot cabin may seem large, it is only a tiny fraction of the complete vehicle. Blue Origin designed the crew cabin to sit near the very bottom of the lander. Once workers integrate the rest of the spacecraft’s systems, such as the giant fuel tanks and rocket engines, the final machine will stand an imposing 52 feet tall. A 52-foot spacecraft dropping out of orbit requires perfect engineering to avoid a complete disaster.
Before anyone rides that towering rocket to the moon, Blue Origin plans to test a smaller uncrewed version first. Engineers call this uncrewed lander Endurance, or the MK1. Right now, the MK1 sits inside a thermal vacuum chamber at a NASA facility. This chamber blasts the lander with extreme heat and cold to see how the metal and electronics survive the harsh environment of space.
Blue Origin hopes to launch the MK1 lander later this year. The Endurance mission will carry several science payloads and attempt to drop them safely onto the lunar surface. A successful landing this year will give Blue Origin the confidence it needs to finish building the massive 52-foot crewed version on time.
NASA holds a tight timeline for the next phase of the program. The space agency set a strict target date of 2027 for the Artemis III mission. During this flight, a crew will launch aboard the Orion spacecraft and travel up into low Earth orbit. Once there, the astronauts will practice flying up to a moon lander and locking the two ships together.
For the 2027 mission, NASA will use whichever lander finishes first. SpaceX and Blue Origin are currently racing to get their respective vehicles ready for that critical docking test. If the Artemis III crew successfully links up with a lander in low Earth orbit, NASA will have all the pieces in place to finally touch down on the moon again in 2028.
