SpaceX’s Starship program won $ 53 to test a full-scale orbital transfer from NASA, taking the agency’s relationship with the space agency to the next level of critical technology.

NASA has released the results of the fifth office of its 14th round of “tipping point” requests, announcing a total of more than $ 3.0 million in rewards to 14 individual agencies. This year’s investments focus on three main categories: “Cryogenic Fluid Management, Lunar Surface [operations], And closed loop [i.e. autonomous] Demonstration of descent and landing ability. “

In a fairly predictable outcome, most (১ 1.6 million) went to Lockheed Martin and the United Launch Alliance (ULA), with the other half (189 9,189 million) split between the remaining twelve companies. Despite the collapse, SpaceX was given enough contracts for an important aspect of starship development.

Today’s tipping point agreement is technically the second time NASA has provided SpaceX funding for propellant transfer development. In October 2019, almost a year ago, SpaceX won 3 3 million to develop and test Cryogenic Fluid Coupler [prototypes] For large-scale in-space propellant transfers, ”marks NASA’s first direct investment in Starship. It looks like NASA was completely satisfied with the results of that icebreaker test – ars 53 53.2 million is enough to fund the entire demonstration of Starship Propellant Transfer.

As Ars Technica’s Eric Burger notes, NASA has invested eight figures in the SpaceX Starship Proposer Transfer report – leaving a total of about $ 2.0 million in four separate agencies – a surprise. By doing so, NASA is effectively testing the tolerance of political partners in programs such as Orion and SLS – more such programs exist to preserve programs and encourage congressional stakeholders. If NASA’s own perimeter, such as the distribution launch and orbital refueling cuts and more effective solutions, are shown, it could be harder to protect the blood-curdling heritage programs of the space agency’s annual budget of about 40% of space for a decade.

NASA says this round of tipping point agreements could last up to five years. With the exception of 41.66 million contracts with intuitive machines to develop a Moon Hopper spacecraft capable of taking shelter around the surface of the moon, the most lucrative prizes have been focused on “cryogenic fluid management”. It received 27 27 million for a small-scale flight demonstration of a fully cryogenic oxygen fluid management system to integrate the spacecraft with the Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft bus and launch it into an electron rocket.

Lockheed Martin “won 89 89.7 million for a space demonstration mission using liquid hydrogen … to test more than a dozen cryogenic fluid management technologies.” The ULA, of which Lockheed Martin is a member, received a 86.2 million reward for testing the Vulcan Center’s high-level “precise tank pressure control, tank-to-trunk transfer and multi-week propellant storage.”

Finally, SpaceX won 53 53.2 million “for large-scale flight demonstrations” to transfer 10 metric tons [liquid oxygen] Among the tanks in the Starship car. Significantly, this suggests that NASA is effectively funding a single-ship orbital flight test so that the Starship prototype will attempt to transfer liquid oxygen between its main LX tank and a small ‘header’ tank (probably)).

The launch of a deal in April 2020 that paid SpaceX ড 135 million to develop a crew starship design suitable for the moon landing, NASA has begun to make some serious money where it faces the development of a wide range of innovative solutions that could enable sustainable humans to explore space.

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