NASA Wants Lunar Lander Concept Studies

Jan 29, 2009
Jefferson Morris jeff_morris@AviationWeek.com



NASA has given prospective bidders until Feb. 27 to deliver proposals for conceptual design work on the Altair lunar lander the agency will use to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

Johnson Space Center in Houston expects to make multiple awards in the spring under the Altair Conceptual Design Contract effort. NASA issued a draft request for proposals (RFP) and held a bidder's conference last month (Aerospace DAILY, Dec. 17).

NASA will direct the contractors, who will support the evaluation of Altair concepts, help mature the designs, and prepare the program for system requirements reviews and system definition reviews. The contractors will serve on joint NASA-industry integrated product teams grouped under categories including vehicle engineering, safety & mission assurance, test & verification, and integration.

"NASA seeks innovative lander design solutions both at the vehicle architecture/configuration level as well as at the level of subsystems and components," the RFP says. "To ensure that innovative ideas receive proper vetting, multiple levels have been introduced into the Altair organization at which innovative ideas can receive initial exposure or re-examination."

NASA is encouraging contractors to think of ways of combining subsystems to reduce weight, and to re-evaluate lander configurations or propose alternative technologies if they could reduce risk or improve performance.

Following launch aboard an unmanned heavy-lift Ares V rocket, the Altair will rendezvous in low Earth orbit with the Orion capsule and its crew, which launches separately on an Ares I. With the help of an Earth Departure Stage, the Altair and Orion will travel to lunar orbit, and the lander will take four astronauts to the surface for initial sorties of one week.

Artist's concept: NASA