Flight track3/2/2024 These funding agreements announced in October 2020, called "Tipping Point" awards, require substantial private funding from the companies participating in the demonstrations.Īccording to John Dankanich, who leads NASA's efforts in developing new capabilities for in-space transportation, there are "major technical obstacles" for cryogenic fluid management. NASA's agreements from 2020 committed more than $250 million in government funding for cryogenic fluid management tests in space. NASA and several companies are funding efforts in this area, called cryogenic fluid management. NASA and industry engineers want to extend this lifetime to days, weeks, or months, but this requires new technologies to maintain the propellants at cryogenic temperature and, in some cases like Starship, to transfer the propellants from one vehicle to another. Russian supply freighters regularly refuel the International Space Station with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, room-temperature rocket propellants that can be stored for years in orbit, but rockets using more efficient super-cold propellants have typically needed to complete their missions within hours. These cryogenic fluids-liquid hydrogen, methane, and liquid oxygen-must be kept at temperatures of several hundred degrees below zero, or they turn into a gas and boil off. In 2020, NASA announced agreements with four companies-Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, and a Florida-based startup named Eta Space-to prove capabilities in the area of refueling and propellant depots using cryogenic propellants. NASA is keen on demonstrating orbital refueling technology, an advancement that could lead to propellant depots in space to feed rockets heading to distant destinations beyond Earth orbit. SpaceX and NASA could take a tentative step toward orbital refueling on the next test flight of Starship, but the US space agency says officials haven't made a final decision on when to begin demonstrating cryogenic propellant transfer capabilities that are necessary to return astronauts to the Moon. This vehicle, called Ship 28, could launch on the next Starship test flight. Enlarge / A crane is attached to one of several Starship test vehicles at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas.
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