Orbit Beyond, Inc., usually stylized as ORBITBeyond, is a aerospace company that builds technologies for lunar exploration. Its products include configurable delivery
lunar lander
A lunar lander or Moon lander is a spacecraft designed to land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2021, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing six lunar landings from 1969 to 19 ...
s with a payload capacity of up to , and rovers.Orbit Beyond, Inc. Accessed: 29 October 2018. The company will contract for private rocket launch services.
Overview
On November 29, 2018, ORBITBeyond was selected to bid robotic lander contracts from NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). ORBITBeyond has engaged former Google Lunar XPRIZE competitor TeamIndus (Axiom Research Labs) for lander engineering, Honeybee Robotics for payload integration, Advanced Space for mission management, and Ceres Robotics for surface operations. Their aim is to create collaborative and scalable spacecraft exploration platforms to support commercial market growth in the cislunar space.
On May 31, 2019, NASA announced that it had selected OrbitBeyond as one of three commercial partners to deliver NASA payloads to the Moon with its Z-01 lander in 2020 and 2021. OrbitBeyond was awarded $97 million to land NASA payloads in
Mare Imbrium
Mare Imbrium (Latin ''imbrium'', the "Sea of Showers" or "Sea of Rains", "Sea of Tears") is a vast lava plain within the Imbrium Basin on the Moon and is one of the larger craters in the Solar System. The Imbrium Basin formed from the colli ...
by September 2020. However, the company dropped out of this contract in July 2019, citing its inability to complete the missions on schedule. Orbit Beyond remains a CLPS contractor eligible to bid on future contracts.
Spacecraft
The company is developing two lunar landers, ''Z-01'' and ''Z-02'', and a small rover called ECA.
''Z-01''
''Z-01'' is based on TeamIndus' lunar lander, previously known as HHK1. On its maiden mission it would carry up to 40 kg of commercial payloads. It features a main engine that produces 440 N, and sixteen 22 N thrusters for finer orbital maneuvers and attitude control (orientation). Its first mission was planned to launch in Q3 2020, but the CLPS contract was cancelled by Orbit Beyond in July 2019.
The mission was targeting
Mare Imbrium
Mare Imbrium (Latin ''imbrium'', the "Sea of Showers" or "Sea of Rains", "Sea of Tears") is a vast lava plain within the Imbrium Basin on the Moon and is one of the larger craters in the Solar System. The Imbrium Basin formed from the colli ...
(29.52º N 25.68º W) just north of Annegrit crater. The landing ellipse for this mission was approximately 2 km x 1.9 km."Terrain-based Analysis as a Design and Planning Tool for Operations of a Lunar Exploration Rover for the TeamIndus Lunar Mission." M. S. Menon, A. Kothandhapani, N. S. Sundaram, S. Nagaraj and V. Raghavan. SpaceOps Conferences. June 2018, Marseille, France. The lander features automated hazard avoidance capabilities.
One of the science payloads is the Lunar Ultraviolet Cosmic Imager, an 80 mm aperture telescope that will scan the sky in the
near UV
NEAR or Near may refer to:
People
* Thomas J. Near, US evolutionary ichthyologist
* Near, a developer who created the higan emulator
Science, mathematics, technology, biology, and medicine
* National Emergency Alarm Repeater (NEAR), a former ...
frequencies (200–320 nm) to look for transient sources. The telescope has been completed and tested, and as of March 2019, is awaiting integration to the lander.
ECA rover
''Z-01'' lander would deploy a micro-rover called ECA (Ek Choti si Asha, Hindi for "A Small Hope"), also developed by
Team Indus
TeamIndus (incorporated as Axiom Research Labs The vehicle is a solar powered electric 4-wheeled rover, its mass is less than , and its maximum drive speed is about 6 cm/s. ECA is equipped with a pair of articulated stereo cameras and a Sun sensor. Monitoring and commanding of the rover is done exclusively through a lander relay link. The rover will operate for one lunar day, and is expected to succumb to the long frigid lunar night.Requirement analysis and night survival concept for Z-01 landing mission using fuel cell. Satishchandra C Wani, Udit Shah, Adithya Kothandapani, Prateek Garg, Mrigank Sahai, Mannika Garg, Sunish Nair. Survive the Lunar Night Workshop 2018 (LPI Contrib. No. 2106)
''Z-02''
''Z-02'' is a larger lander concept that would carry up to 500 kg of commercial payloads.