Blue Origin is buying Honeybee Robotics, a company that develops robotic systems for space and other extreme environments. Honeybee Robotics announced Jan. 25 that its parent company, Ensign-Bickford Industries, was selling it to Blue Origin. Terms of the deal, expected to close in mid-February, were not disclosed. Honeybee Robotics is best known in the space industry for developing robotics systems, notably drills and other mechanisms, for use on space missions. That has included drills and sample collection systems flown on several Mars missions as well as others under development for missions to the moon and NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. “Joining Blue Origin is a major step forward for us,” said Kiel Davis, president of Honeybee Robotics, in a statement. “With Blue Origin we look forward to further expanding our capacity to meet the most exciting challenges in next-generation space transportation, space mobility, space destinations, and planetary science and exploration.” “We’re beyond excited to welcome Honeybee Robotics to our team,” Brent Sherwood, senior vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin, said in the statement. “We value the company’s brand, talent, unique expertise, and product lines. And we know that together we will make bold things possible.”
Honeybee Robotics has provided components for several NASA missions, such as the sampling system on Phoenix Mars lander's robotic arm. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Honeybee was founded in New York City in 1983 and started working on NASA projects in 1986. The company now has locations in Colorado and Southern California and, in addition to space, works in terrestrial mining and energy markets as well as defense and other industrial applications. Ensign-Bickford acquired Honeybee in 2017 and, in 2019, combined it with Avior Controls, a manufacturer of space-rated mechanisms.
Blue Origin said it will retain Honeybee as a separate entity and with “no notable changes” to its products or customers. It did not disclose its long-term plans for the company or its technologies, although Blue Origin and its founder, Jeff Bezos, have long discussed using space resources to enable the expansion of humanity into space.
“Over time, the combined capabilities of Honeybee and Blue Origin will create new opportunities, efficiencies, and innovations as they work together to develop space to benefit Earth,” the companies said.
At one-sixth that of Earth, the unique gravity of the lunar surface is one of the many variable conditions that technologies bound for the Moon will need to perform well in. NASA will soon have more options for testing those innovations in lunar gravity thanks to a collaboration with Blue Origin to bring new testing capabilities to the company’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket system. Currently, NASA can approximate the Moon’s gravity on parabolic flights and in centrifuges on suborbital vehicles – both invaluable options for maturing promising innovations. But these methods provide only seconds of lunar gravity exposure at a time or limit the payload size, compelling NASA to explore longer-duration and larger size options. Blue Origin’s new lunar gravity testing capability – projected to be available in late 2022 – is answering that need. New Shepard’s upgrades will allow the vehicle to use its reaction control system to impart a rotation on the capsule. As a result, the entire capsule essentially acts as a large centrifuge to create artificial gravity environments for the payloads inside. Blue Origin’s first flight of this capability will target 11 rotations per minute to provide more than two minutes of continuous lunar gravity, exposing the technologies to this challenging but difficult-to-test condition.
This new capability is made possible with the help of development funding and early purchase of payload space by NASA as part of its strategic investment in the U.S. spaceflight industry. The lunar gravity simulation will enable the agency to test and de-risk innovations critical to achieving the goals of the Artemis program, as well as lunar surface exploration and Moon-bound commercial applications.
“NASA is pleased to be among the first customers to take advantage of this new capability,” said Christopher Baker, program executive for the Flight Opportunities program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “One of the constant challenges with living and working in space is reduced gravity. Many systems designed for use on Earth simply do not work the same elsewhere. A wide range of tools we need for the Moon and Mars could benefit from testing in partial gravity, including technologies for in-situ resource utilization, regolith mining, and environmental control and life support systems.”
New Shepard is currently among the commercial flight platforms available for technology flight testing contracted by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. The program has helped mature hundreds of promising space-based technologies from NASA, industry, and academia by putting them through their paces on commercial suborbital vehicles before they move on to higher risk orbital missions – on CubeSats, the International Space Station, the Moon, or even Mars. New Shepard’s future lunar gravity capability will expand the suborbital flight test offerings not only for the company but for the Flight Opportunities program as well, adding to the specialized testing available for the technologies selected for testing by the program each year.
“Humanity has been dreaming about artificial gravity since the earliest days of spaceflight,” said Erika Wagner, PhD, New Shepard director of payloads at Blue Origin. “It’s exciting to be partnering with NASA to create this one-of-a-kind capability to explore the science and technology we will need for future human space exploration.”
About Flight Opportunities
The Flight Opportunities program is funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and managed at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley manages the solicitation and evaluation of technologies to be tested and demonstrated on commercial flight vehicles.
Senior VP Jarrett Jones said the schedule had to be pushed back following the Space Force decision to not select New Glenn as a national security launch provider. WASHINGTON — Blue Origin is pushing back the first launch of its New Glenn rocket to late 2022, saying it “re-baselined” the development of the launch vehicle after losing a key Pentagon contract last year. Blue Origin announced Feb. 25 that it has set a new target in the fourth quarter of 2022 for the first launch of the rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The company originally targeted New Glenn’s inaugural launch for 2020, but by early 2020 had delayed it to late 2021. Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Glenn, told SpaceNews that the schedule had to be pushed back for technical and financial reasons following the Space Force decision in August to not select New Glenn for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Launch Services Procurement. “That was a big hit for us,” Jones said. “We had to consider the economics.” Blue Origin lost out to United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, who were selected as national security space launch providers from 2022 to 2027. Not being selected cost Blue Origin billions of dollars, he argued. Blue Origin in October 2018 won a $500 million Launch Service Agreement deal with the Air Force but the LSA was terminated in December 2020 after Blue Origin received just $255.5 million. Blue Origin estimated that not winning the five-year procurement contract cost the company up to $3 billion in revenue, Jones said.
Aerial view of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket factory at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Credit: Blue Origin
Despite the setback, “New Glenn is moving forward,” he said. “It was never a consideration” to not continue developing the vehicle for commercial and civil space customers. “Blue Origin remains committed to New Glenn, and we have the resources aligned to meet our plans.”
New Glenn will be ready to compete again for NSSL Phase 3 when the next contract goes up for bidding in 2024, said Jones. “We hope to launch NSSL payloads in the future, and remain committed to serving the U.S. national defense mission.”
After the loss of the Phase 2 contract, Blue Origin “re-baselined” the New Glenn timeline and development plan, Jones said. “We looked at everything that was on the table, including funding and customers, and we put together a high-probability schedule where we put all of our resources and spread out the necessary funding we needed.”
He cited several developments on the critical path for New Glenn to meet that new launch date, from production of the large propellant tanks for the rocket to radiation testing of its avionics. “I worry about everything,” he said.
The company has completed a qualification version of the seven-meter payload fairing for the rocket, along with a payload adapter, which will be tested later this year at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio. Blue Origin has a first stage simulator in its Florida factory that some observers caught a glimpse of earlier this month. “Within the next couple of weeks, people will start to see that roll around,” Jones said.
The company is also completing new facilities at LC-36, a former Atlas launch pad that Blue Origin took over in 2015. Major construction at the pad is now wrapping up, with system activation and checkouts starting. “The expectation is that next year it will be commissioned,” he said.
That pad alone cost the company $1 billion, part of $2.5 billion in overall investment by Blue Origin in facilities such as the New Glenn factory just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center and an engine factory the company completed a year ago in Huntsville, Alabama.
Jones said Blue Origin intends to deliver flight qualified BE-4 engines to United Launch Alliance on time for ULA’s planned maiden launch of its Vulcan rocket late this year. “We’re hot firing regularly and every time you turn around, we’re doing additional tests,” he said. “We have over 11,000 seconds of accumulated test time and we feel confident.”
New Glenn will fulfill its current commercial New Glenn contracts and pursue new civil space launch contracts. The company has previously announced launch contracts with Eutelsat, Mu Space, OneWeb, Sky Perfect JSAT and Telesat, and Jones said the company discussed the revised development schedules with them. “We are still meeting their needs,” he said. “No one is surprised by today’s announcement.”
Blue Origin also intends to position New Glenn to compete with SpaceX in the rideshare market for small satellite launches. “That’s a really big opportunity for us,” said Jones. “We’re doing the development work now to look at the different adapters we need to have for different satellite sizes and for reconfigurable satellites.”
Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and a lesser-known company, Huntsville, Ala.-based Dynetics, are preparing for a major decision by NASA early in 2021 about which company will build human-carrying landers for trips to the moon. The three space firms were selected in April to submit proposals early this month. Having done that, they now await NASA's decision, which is scheduled for February. The space agency has indicated it could pick one or two of the proposals. At stake is the future of lunar exploration for the United States and large, multimillion-dollar contracts as part of NASA's planned Artemis program. The agency had a goal of landing people on the moon again by 2024, although Congress hasn't funded NASA's budget requests to meet that schedule. A contract for a human lander may be awarded, but it's not clear if such landers will be built anytime soon, said Marco Caceres, space analyst for the Teal Group based in Fairfax, Va. "Artemis was proposed in another age in our history before the pandemic and the recent election, so I'm not convinced it will happen," Caceres said Tuesday. "From a technical standpoint, the Dynetics proposal has strengths, but NASA tends to pick a known quantity for such spaceflight missions." SpaceX already has multiple high-profile contracts with NASA, including the commercial crew contract to take astronauts to the International Space Station, while Blue Origin has flown NASA hardware on the company's New Shepard rocket. Blue Origin lined up legacy space companies Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to help develop a lander, Caceres noted.
Blue Origin, of Kent, Wash., plans to develop a three-stage lander to be launched on its own New Glenn rocket and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. But neither of those rockets has launched; both are being developed.
SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., is developing the Starship, a fully integrated lander intended for launch on the Starship Super Heavy rocket. It also is being developed, having completed a prototype test flight to nearly 8 miles high Dec. 9.
Dynetics' lander will provide ascent and descent capabilities and also is planned to be launched on the Vulcan. Dynetics is a tech and engineering firm and a subsidiary of engineering firm Leidos.
All three proposed landers could be refueled at the moon, but Dynetics' lander is designed to be easily reusable for multiple hops around the moon, Robert Wright, Dynetics' program manager, said in an interview Thursday.
Dynetics is the only lander with a horizontal crew cabin, as opposed to an upright, vertical cabin, which would allow faster and easier access to the lunar surface, Wright said.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin would require a crew to descend on long ladders from a cabin high atop a landing vehicle.
"We're in the unique position of being closer to the lunar surface than the other competitors have shown in their concepts," Wright said.
"Having the horizontal capsule, or chamber, means astronauts would have more room to put spacesuits on, and a dust barrier to prevent gritty moon dust from entering the quarters."
But putting the crew cabin higher over the ground is an advantage for Blue Origin's lander, Blue Moon, the company's chief scientist Steve Squyres said in a recent video news release.
"When you land on an unprepared surface, on no landing pad, there are bad things that can happen," such as rocket thrusters kicking up sharp rocks, Squyres said. "The other thing that can happen is you can crunch your engine on the ground when you land."
Therefore, he said, the Blue Moon lander would put the crew and ascent engines on top, "out of harm's way."
Dynetics' Wright said the company's lander still protects the engines with its design, which shows the bottom of a barrel-shaped capsule extending below the engines to protect them from the ground.
SpaceX declined a request for comment. NASA declined requests for interviews "to protect the integrity of the process" as the contract award announcement nears, a spokeswoman said.
The human lander contract will mark a milestone toward "sending the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 and establishing sustainable exploration by the end of the decade," according to a NASA statement.
Blue Origin issued the following statement regarding the U.S. Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Launch Services Procurement (LSP) announcement. Bob Smith, CEO, Blue Origin said, "We are disappointed in the decision that New Glenn was not selected for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Launch Services Procurement (LSP). We submitted an incredibly compelling offer for the national security community and the U.S. taxpayer. "Blue Origin's offer was based on New Glenn's heavy-lift performance, unprecedented private investment of more than $2.5 billion, and a very competitive single basic launch service price for any mission across the entire ordering period. "We are proceeding with New Glenn development to fulfill our current commercial contracts, pursue a large and growing commercial market, and enter into new civil space launch contracts. "We remain confident New Glenn will play a critical role for the national security community in the future due to the increasing realization that space is a contested domain and a robust, responsive, and resilient launch capability is ever more vital to U.S security. "Blue Origin is very proud that our BE-4 engine will power United Launch Alliance's Vulcan launch vehicle in support of the Space Force's NSSL program and end reliance on Russian-built engines.
"The BE-4 is the most powerful liquefied natural gas-fueled rocket engine ever developed and the first oxygen-rich staged combustion engine made in the U.S. We look forward to supporting ULA's long-standing role in launching national security payloads."
Pryer Aerospace has signed a multi-year contract with Blue Origin. Under this contract, Pryer will provide large complex machined parts and leading edge structures for New Glenn, Blue Origin's massive heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle, designed to support national security space launch and commercial space missions for years to come. "With this contract Pryer Aerospace solidifies a role for Oklahoma and our company in the Space industry. Our relationship with Blue Origin and this contract expands and diversifies our business, creates job opportunities, and puts Pryer Aerospace in a position to be a premier Tier 1 supplier in a technically challenging market. "We are proud to be a part of the Blue Origin Team and look forward to contributing to Blue Origin's mission of building a road to space so our children can build the future," said Jeff Landreth, CEO of Pryer Aerospace. "We are proud to work with Pryer Aerospace, a world-class supplier, on a long-term agreement with our New Glenn vehicle to support national security space launch and commercial space missions," said Bob Smith, CEO, Blue Origin. "During these unprecedented times, we are pleased to be looking at long-term opportunities with small business suppliers across the nation, and are pleased to have found a fantastic partner in Pryer. Together, we are ensuring a robust supply base in Oklahoma for many years to come."
Founded in 1965, Pryer Aerospace is a leading provider of structural components, assemblies, and kits to the aerospace industry. Specializing in the fabrication and assembly of complex sheet metal and machined components.
The two companies leading the pack in the pursuit of space tourism say they are just months away from their first out-of-this-world passenger flights -- though neither has set a firm date. Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, and Blue Origin, by Amazon creator Jeff Bezos, are racing to be the first to finish their tests -- with both companies using radically different technology. Neither Virgin nor Blue Origin's passengers will find themselves orbiting the Earth: instead, their weightless experience will last just minutes. It's an offering far different from the first space tourists, who paid tens of millions of dollars to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in the 2000s. Having paid for a much cheaper ticket -- costing $250,000 with Virgin, as yet unknown with Blue Origin -- the new round of space tourists will be propelled dozens of miles into the atmosphere, before coming back down to Earth. By comparison, the ISS is in orbit 250 miles (400 kilometers) from our planet. The goal is to approach or pass through the imaginary line marking where space begins -- either the Karman line, at 100 kilometers or 62 miles, or the 50-mile boundary recognized by the US Air Force.
At this altitude, the sky looks dark and the curvature of the earth can be seen clearly.
- Virgin Galactic -
With Virgin Galactic, six passengers and two pilots are boarded onto SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity, which resembles a private jet.
The VSS Unity will be attached to a carrier spacecraft -- the WhiteKnightTwo -- from which it will then detach at around 49,000 feet (15,000 meters.) Once released, the spaceship will fire up its rocket, and head for the sky.
Then, the passengers will float in zero-gravity for several minutes, before coming back to Earth.
The descent is slowed down by a "feathering" system that sees the spacecraft's tail pivot, as if arching, before returning to normal and gliding to land at Virgin's "spaceport" in the New Mexico desert.
In total, the mission lasts between 90 minutes and two hours. During a May 29 test in California's Mojave desert, the spaceship reached an altitude of 21 miles, heading for space.
In October 2014, the Virgin spaceship broke down in flight due to a piloting error, killing one of two pilots on board. The tests later resumed with a new craft.
The company has now also reached a deal to open a second "spaceport" at Italy's Tarente-Grottaglie airport, in the south of the country.
Branson in May told BBC Radio 4 that he hoped to himself be one of the first passengers in the next 12 months. About 650 people make up the rest of the waiting list, Virgin told AFP.
- Blue Origin -
Blue Origin, meanwhile, has developed a system closer to the traditional rocket: the New Shepard.
On this journey, six passengers take their place in a "capsule" fixed to the top of a 60-foot-long rocket. After launching, it detaches and continues its trajectory several miles toward the sky. During an April 29 test, the capsule made it 66 miles.
After a few minutes of weightlessness, during which passengers can take in the view through large windows, the capsule gradually falls back to earth with three large parachutes and retrorockets used to slow the spacecraft.
From take-off to landing, the flight took 10 minutes during the latest test.
Until now, tests have only been carried out using dummies at Blue Origin's West Texas site.
But one of its directors, Rob Meyerson, said in June the first human tests would come "soon."
Meanwhile, another company official, Yu Matsutomi, said during a conference Wednesday that the first tests with passengers would take place "at the end of this year," according to Space News.
- What's next? -
SpaceX and Boeing are developing their own capsules to transport NASA astronauts, most likely in 2020, after delays -- a significant investment that the companies will likely make up for by offering private passenger flights.
"If you're looking to go to space, you'll have quadruple the menu of options that you ever had before," Phil Larson, assistant dean at the University of Colorado, Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Science, told AFP.
Longer term, the Russian firm that manufactures Soyuz rockets is studying the possibility of taking tourists back to the ISS. And a US start-up called Orion Span announced earlier this year it hopes to place a luxury space hotel into orbit within a few years -- but the project is still in its early stages.
An emerging technology for removing excessive, potentially damaging heat from small, tightly packed instrument electronics and other spaceflight gear will be demonstrated for the first time during an upcoming suborbital flight aboard a reusable launch vehicle. Thermal engineer Franklin Robinson, who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is scheduled to fly his experiment aboard the fully reusable Blue Origin New Shepard launch vehicle to prove that the microgap-cooling technology is immune from the effects of zero gravity. The demonstration, funded by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate's Flight Opportunities program, is an important step in validating the system, which engineers believe could be ideal for cooling tightly packed, high-power integrated circuits, power electronics, laser heads or other devices. The smaller the space between these electronics, the harder it is to remove the heat. Because these devices are vulnerable to overheating - just like any electronic device on Earth - the cooling technology must operate under all conditions, including the microgravity environment found in space.
"Frank [Robinson] is demonstrating the fundamental concept and we need the flight validation to gain confidence," said Goddard Senior Technologist for Strategic Integration Ted Swanson. "While theory predicts that the lack of gravity would have a negligible impact on the performance of microgap coolers, this needs to be demonstrated in a space-like environment. Otherwise, potential users are unlikely to commit to the technology."
Microchannel Conduits
With microgap cooling, heat generated by electronics and other devices is removed by flowing a coolant through embedded, rectangular-shaped channels within or between heat-generating devices. Robinson's flight experiment also features "flow boiling," where, as its name implies, the coolant boils as it flows through the tiny gaps. According to Robinson, the technique offers a higher rate of heat transfer, which keeps devices cooler and, therefore, less likely to fail due to overheating.
To remove heat in more traditional electronic devices, designers create a "floor plan." They keep the heat-generating circuits and other hardware as far apart as possible. The heat travels into the printed circuit board, where it is directed to a clamp in the sidewall of the electronics box, eventually making its way to a box-mounted radiator.
Traditional approaches, however, would not work well for emerging 3-D integrated circuitry - a highly promising technology that could satisfy users' thirst for more computing power.
With 3-D circuitry, computer chips literally are stacked atop one another and not spread over a circuit board, saving space in electronic devices and instruments. Interconnects link each level to its adjacent neighbors, much like how elevators connect one floor to the next in a skyscraper. With shorter wiring linking the chips, data moves both horizontally and vertically, improving bandwidth, computational speed and performance, all while consuming less power.
Because not all the chips are in contact with the printed circuit board, traditional cooling techniques wouldn't work well with 3-D circuitry, Robinson said, adding he began his research with NASA support to assure that the agency could take advantage of 3-D circuitry when it became available.
"However, we can remove the heat by flowing a coolant through these tiny embedded channels."
Testing Effectiveness in Microgravity
Although Robinson has tested his cooling technology at various orientations in a laboratory, the question is whether it would be equally effective in space. "What we need to determine is how small the channels must be to achieve gravity independence. Right now, we don't have a perfect understanding," he said.
Should the microgap technology succeed during the demonstration, the next step would be to find an actual application and demonstrate it in space, Swanson said.
Through the Flight Opportunities program, the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) selects promising technologies from industry, academia and government for testing on commercial launch vehicles. The program is funded by STMD, and managed at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
STMD is responsible for developing the crosscutting, pioneering, new technologies and capabilities needed by the agency to achieve its current and future missions.
