The new collaboration, announced on 9th May in Washington, will see SSTL investigate the possibility of using Blue Moon, Blue Origin’s commercial lunar cargo transportation service, for the transportation of its spacecraft and customer payloads.
In 2018 SSTL, Goonhilly Earth Station and the European Space Agency signed a collaboration agreement for Commercial Lunar Mission Support Services. This innovative commercial partnership for exploration between ESA, GES and SSTL aims to develop a European lunar telecommunications and navigation infrastructure, including the delivery of payloads and nanosats to lunar orbit to support lunar scientific and economic development.
The first offering from the partnership is a low cost service enabling new, and regular, mission opportunities to the Moon, the next frontier for commerce and sustainable solar system exploration and exploitation.
The service opens opportunities for the deployment of low cost missions into lunar orbit through the use of a high availability, high data rate communications system. This will enable science, prospecting, capability building, education and technology demonstration applications to see a greater return of high value data, acting as a multiplier in terms of benefits, while reducing the entry cost to Lunar missions.
A call for lunar missions and payloads is now open and we invite you to discuss how we can meet your mission needs. Contact lunar@sstl.co.uk