The old saying — “Practice makes perfect!” — applies to the Moon too. On Tuesday, NASA gave 17 technologies, instruments, and experiments the chance to practice being on the Moon… without actually going there. Instead, it was a flight test aboard a vehicle adapted to simulate lunar gravity for approximately two minutes.

The test began on February 4, 2025, with the 10:00 a.m. CST launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket system in West Texas. With support from NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, the company, headquartered in Kent, Washington, enhanced the flight capabilities of its New Shepard capsule to replicate the Moon’s gravity — which is about one-sixth of Earth’s — during suborbital flight.

“Commercial companies are critical to helping NASA prepare for missions to the Moon and beyond,” said Danielle McCulloch, program executive of the agency’s Flight Opportunities program. “The more similar a test environment is to a mission’s operating environment, the better. So, we provided substantial support to this flight test to expand the available vehicle capabilities, helping ensure technologies are ready for lunar exploration.”

NASA’s Flight Opportunities program not only secured “seats” for the technologies aboard this flight — for 16 payloads inside the capsule plus one mounted externally — but also contributed to New Shepard’s upgrades to provide the environment needed to advance their readiness for the Moon and other space exploration missions.

“An extended period of simulated lunar gravity is an important test regime for NASA,” said Greg Peters, program manager for Flight Opportunities. “It’s crucial to reducing risk for innovations that might one day go to the lunar surface.”

One example is the LUCI (Lunar-g Combustion Investigation) payload, which seeks to understand material flammability on the Moon compared to Earth. This is an important component of astronaut safety in habitats on the Moon and could inform the design of potential combustion devices there. With support from the Moon to Mars Program Office within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, together with Voyager Technologies, designed LUCI to measure flame propagation directly during the Blue Origin flight.

The rest of the NASA-supported payloads on this Blue Origin flight included seven from NASA’s Game Changing Development program that seek to mitigate the impact of lunar dust and to perform construction and excavation on the lunar surface. Three other NASA payloads tested instruments to detect subsurface water on the Moon as well as to study flow physics and phase changes in lunar gravity. Rounding out the manifest were payloads from Draper, Honeybee Robotics, Purdue University, and the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Flight Opportunities is part of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and is managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.

By Nancy Pekar, NASA’s Flight Opportunities program

With a suite of NASA science and technology on board, Firefly Aerospace is targeting no earlier than 3:45 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 2, to land the Blue Ghost lunar lander on the Moon. Blue Ghost is slated to touch down near Mare Crisium, a plain in the northeast quadrant on the near side of the Moon, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign to establish a long-term lunar presence.

Live coverage of the landing, jointly hosted by NASA and Firefly, will air on NASA+ starting at 2:30 a.m. EST, approximately 75 minutes before touchdown on the Moon’s surface. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media. The broadcast will also stream on Firefly’s YouTube channel. Coverage will include live streaming and blog updates as the descent milestones occur.

Accredited media interested in attending the in-person landing event hosted by Firefly in the Austin, Texas, area may request media credentials through this form by Monday, Feb. 24.

Following the landing, NASA and Firefly will host a news conference to discuss the mission and science opportunities that lie ahead as they begin lunar surface operations. The time of the briefing will be shared after touchdown.  

Blue Ghost launched Jan. 15, at 1:11 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander is carrying a suite of 10 NASA scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, which will provide insights into the Moon’s environment and test technologies to support future astronauts landing safely on the lunar surface, as well as Mars.

NASA continues to work with multiple American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface through the agency’s CLPS initiative. This pool of companies may bid on contracts for end-to-end lunar delivery services, including payload integration and operations, launching from Earth, and landing on the surface of the Moon. NASA’s CLPS contracts are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a cumulative maximum value of $2.6 billion through 2028. In February 2021, the agency awarded Firefly this delivery of 10 NASA science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon using its American-designed and -manufactured lunar lander for approximately $93.3 million (modified to $101.5 million).

Through the Artemis campaign, commercial robotic deliveries will perform science experiments, test technologies, and demonstrate capabilities on and around the Moon to help NASA explore in advance of Artemis Generation astronaut missions to the lunar surface, and ultimately crewed missions to Mars.

Watch, engage on social media 

Let people know you’re following the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by using the hashtag #Artemis. You can also stay connected by following and tagging these accounts: 

X: @NASA, @NASA_Johnson, @NASAArtemis, @NASAMoon 

Facebook: NASA, NASAJohnsonSpaceCenter, NASAArtemis 

Instagram: @NASA, @NASAJohnson, @NASAArtemis 

For more information about the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative: 

https://www.nasa.gov/clps

-end- 

Karen Fox / Alise Fisher 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1600  
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov  

Natalia Riusech / Nilufar Ramji
Johnson Space Center, Houston 
281-483-5111 
natalia.s.riusech@nasa.gov / nilufar.ramji@nasa.gov 

NASA’s Artemis campaign will send astronauts, payloads, and science experiments into deep space on NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) super heavy-lift Moon rocket. Starting with Artemis IV, the Orion spacecraft and its astronauts will be joined by other payloads atop an upgraded version of the SLS, called Block 1B. SLS Block 1B will deliver initial elements of a lunar space station designed to enable long term exploration of the lunar surface and pave the way for future journeys to Mars. To fly these advanced payloads, engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are building a cone-shaped adapter that is key to SLS Block 1B.

The payload adapter, nestled within the universal stage adapter sitting atop the SLS Block 1B’s exploration upper stage, acts as a connecting point to secure a large payload that is co-manifested – or flying along with – the Orion spacecraft. The adapter consists of eight composite panels with an aluminum honeycomb core and two aluminum rings.

Beginning with the Artemis IV mission, SLS Block 1B will feature a new, more powerful upper stage that provides a substantial increase in payload mass, volume, and energy over the first variant of the rocket that is launching Artemis missions I through III. SLS Block 1B can send 84,000 pounds of payload – including both a crewed Orion spacecraft and a 10-metric ton (22,046 lbs.) co-manifested payload riding in a separate cargo compartment – to the Moon in a single launch.

Artemis IV’s co-manifested payload will be the Lunar I-Hab, one of the initial elements of the Gateway lunar space station. Built by ESA (European Space Agency), the Lunar I-Hab provides expanded capability for astronauts to live, work, conduct science experiments, and prepare for their missions to the lunar surface.

Before the Artemis IV mission structure was finalized, NASA engineers needed to design and test the new payload adapter.

“With SLS, there’s an intent to have as much commonality between flights as possible,” says Brent Gaddes, Lead for the Orion Stage Adapter and Payload Adapter in the SLS Spacecraft/Payload Integration & Evolution Office at NASA Marshall.

However, with those payloads changing typically every flight, the connecting payload adapter must change as well.

“We knew there needed to be a lot of flexibility to the payload adapter, and that we needed to be able to respond quickly in-house once the payloads were finalized,” says Gaddes.

A Flexible Approach

The required flexibility was not going to be satisfied with a one-size-fits-all approach, according to Gaddes.

Since different size payload adapters could be needed, Marshall is using a flexible approach to assemble the payload adapter that eliminates the need for heavy and expensive tooling used to hold the parts in place during assembly.  A computer model of each completed part is created using a process called structured light scanning. The computer model provides the precise locations where holes need to be drilled to hold the parts together so that the completed payload adapter will be exactly the right size.

“Structured light has helped us reduce costs and increase flexibility on the payload adapter and allows us to pivot,” says Gaddes. “If the call came down to build a cargo version of SLS to launch 40 metric tons, for example, we can use our same tooling with the structured light approach to adapt to different sizes, whether that’s for an adapter with a larger diameter that’s shorter, or one with a smaller diameter that’s longer. It’s faster and cheaper.”  

NASA Marshall engineers use an automated placement robot to manufacture eight lightweight composite panels from a graphite epoxy material. The robot performs fast, accurate lamination following preprogrammed paths, its high speed and precision resulting in lower cost and significantly faster production than other manufacturing methods.

At NASA Marshall, an engineering development unit of the payload has been successfully tested which demonstrated that it can handle up to three times the expected load. Another test version currently in development, called the qualification unit, will also be tested to NASA standards for composite structures to ensure that the flight unit will perform as expected.

“The payload adapter is shaped like a cone, and historically, most of the development work on structures like this has been on cylinders, so that’s one of the many reasons why testing it is so important,” says Gaddes. “NASA will test as high a load as possible to learn what produces structural failure. Any information we learn here will feed directly into the body of information NASA has pulled together over the years on how to analyze structures like this, and of course that’s something that’s shared with industry as well. It’s a win for everybody.”

With Artemis, NASA will explore more of the Moon than ever before, learn how to live and work away from home, and prepare for future human exploration of the Red Planet. NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, exploration ground systems, and Orion spacecraft, along with the human landing system, next-generation spacesuits, Gateway lunar space station, and future rovers are NASA’s foundation for deep space exploration.

News Media Contact

Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. 
256-544-0034 
jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov

You would not expect to see NASA at a car show—but that’s exactly where Johnson Space Center employees were from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2, 2025, driving the future of space exploration forward. 

At the Houston AutoBoative Show, a fusion of the auto and boat show, NASA rolled out its Artemis exhibit at NRG Center for the first time, introducing vehicle enthusiasts to the technologies NASA and commercial partners will use to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. 

The Artemis exhibit stood alongside some of the world’s most advanced cars and boats, offering visitors an up-close look at lunar terrain vehicle mockups from Astrolab, Intuitive Machines, and Lunar Outpost. Later this year, NASA will select the rover that will fly to the Moon as humanity prepares for the next giant leap. 

In addition to the rovers, the exhibit featured a mockup of JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) pressurized rover, designed as a mobile habitat for astronauts, and Axiom Space’s lunar spacesuit, developed for Artemis III astronauts. 

These capabilities will allow astronauts to explore, conduct science research, and live and work on the lunar surface.  

Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche visited the Artemis exhibit to highlight the importance of these technologies in advancing lunar exploration. Every lesson learned on the Moon will help scientists and engineers develop the strategies, technologies, and experience needed to send astronauts to Mars.  

“By bringing the excitement of lunar exploration to the AutoBoative Show, NASA aims to inspire the next generation of explorers to dream bigger, push farther, and help shape humanity’s future in space,” Wyche said.  

NASA’s Artemis campaign is setting the stage for long-term human exploration, working with commercial and international partners to establish a sustained presence on the Moon before progressing to Mars. 

To make this vision a reality, NASA is developing rockets, spacecraft, landing systems, spacesuits, rovers, habitats, and more.  

Some of the key elements on display at the show included:

• The Orion spacecraft – Designed to take astronauts farther into deep space. Orion will launch atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, carrying the crew to the Moon on Artemis missions and safely returning them to Earth.

• Lunar terrain vehicles – Developed to transport astronauts across the rugged lunar surface or be remotely operated. NASA recently put these rover mockups to the test at Johnson, where astronauts and engineers, wearing spacesuits, ran through critical maneuvers, tasks, and emergency drills—including a simulated crew rescue.

• Next-gen spacesuits and tools – Through Johnson’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program, astronauts’ gear and equipment are designed to ensure safety and efficiency while working on the Moon’s surface.

Guests had the chance to step into the role of an astronaut with interactive experiences like: 

• Driving a lunar rover simulator – Testing their skills at the wheel of a virtual Moon rover. 

• Practicing a simulated Orion docking – Experiencing the precision needed to connect to Gateway in lunar orbit. 

• Exploring Artemis II and III mission roadmaps – Learning about NASA’s upcoming missions and goals. 

Attendees also discovered how American companies are delivering science and technology to the Moon through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. 

“Everyone can relate to exploration, so it was great to teach people the importance lunar rovers will have on astronauts’ abilities to explore more of the lunar surface while conducting science,” said Victoria Ugalde, communications strategist for the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program, who coordinated the lunar rovers’ appearance at the show. 

Check out the rovers contracted to develop lunar terrain vehicle capabilities below.

Did you know that the same search and rescue technologies developed by NASA for astronaut missions to space help locate and rescue people across the United States and around the world? 

NASA’s collaboration with the international satellite-aided search and rescue effort known as Cospas-Sarsat has enabled the development of multiple emergency location beacons for explorers on land, sea, and air. 

Of the 407 lives saved in 2024 through search and rescue efforts in the United States, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) reports that 52 rescues were the result of activated personal locator beacons, 314 from emergency position-indicating radio beacons, and 41 from emergency locator transmitters. Since 1982, more than 50,000 lives have been saved across the world. 

Using GPS satellites, these beacons transmit their location to the Cospas-Sarsat network once activated. The beacons then provide the activation coordinates to the network, allowing first responders to rescue lost or distressed explorers.  

The Search and Rescue Office, part of NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program, has assisted in search and rescue services since its formation in 1979 Now, the office is building on their long legacy of Earth-based beacon development to support crewed missions to space. 

The beacons also are used for emergency location, if needed, as part of NASA’s crew launches to and from the International Space Station, and will support NASA’s Artemis campaign crew recovery preparations during future missions returning from deep space. Systems being tested, like the ANGEL (Advanced Next-Generation Emergency Locator) beacon, are benefitting life on Earth and missions to the Moon and Mars. Most recently, NASA partnered with the Department of Defense to practice Artemis II recovery procedures – including ANGEL beacon activation – during URT-11 (Underway Recovery Test 11).  

The SCaN program at NASA Headquarters in Washington provides strategic oversight to the Search and Rescue office. NOAA manages the U.S. network region for Cospas-Sarsat, which relies on flight and ground technologies originally developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. U.S. region rescue efforts are led by the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Air Force, and many other local rescue authorities. 

The old saying — “Practice makes perfect!” — applies to the Moon too. On Tuesday, NASA gave 17 technologies, instruments, and experiments the chance to practice being on the Moon… without actually going there. Instead, it was a flight test aboard a vehicle adapted to simulate lunar gravity for approximately two minutes.

The test began on February 4, 2025, with the 10:00 a.m. CST launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket system in West Texas. With support from NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, the company, headquartered in Kent, Washington, enhanced the flight capabilities of its New Shepard capsule to replicate the Moon’s gravity — which is about one-sixth of Earth’s — during suborbital flight.

“Commercial companies are critical to helping NASA prepare for missions to the Moon and beyond,” said Danielle McCulloch, program executive of the agency’s Flight Opportunities program. “The more similar a test environment is to a mission’s operating environment, the better. So, we provided substantial support to this flight test to expand the available vehicle capabilities, helping ensure technologies are ready for lunar exploration.”

NASA’s Flight Opportunities program not only secured “seats” for the technologies aboard this flight — for 16 payloads inside the capsule plus one mounted externally — but also contributed to New Shepard’s upgrades to provide the environment needed to advance their readiness for the Moon and other space exploration missions.

“An extended period of simulated lunar gravity is an important test regime for NASA,” said Greg Peters, program manager for Flight Opportunities. “It’s crucial to reducing risk for innovations that might one day go to the lunar surface.”

One example is the LUCI (Lunar-g Combustion Investigation) payload, which seeks to understand material flammability on the Moon compared to Earth. This is an important component of astronaut safety in habitats on the Moon and could inform the design of potential combustion devices there. With support from the Moon to Mars Program Office within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, together with Voyager Technologies, designed LUCI to measure flame propagation directly during the Blue Origin flight.

The rest of the NASA-supported payloads on this Blue Origin flight included seven from NASA’s Game Changing Development program that seek to mitigate the impact of lunar dust and to perform construction and excavation on the lunar surface. Three other NASA payloads tested instruments to detect subsurface water on the Moon as well as to study flow physics and phase changes in lunar gravity. Rounding out the manifest were payloads from Draper, Honeybee Robotics, Purdue University, and the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Flight Opportunities is part of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and is managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.

By Nancy Pekar, NASA’s Flight Opportunities program

With a suite of NASA science and technology on board, Firefly Aerospace is targeting no earlier than 3:45 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 2, to land the Blue Ghost lunar lander on the Moon. Blue Ghost is slated to touch down near Mare Crisium, a plain in the northeast quadrant on the near side of the Moon, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign to establish a long-term lunar presence.

Live coverage of the landing, jointly hosted by NASA and Firefly, will air on NASA+ starting at 2:30 a.m. EST, approximately 75 minutes before touchdown on the Moon’s surface. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media. The broadcast will also stream on Firefly’s YouTube channel. Coverage will include live streaming and blog updates as the descent milestones occur.

Accredited media interested in attending the in-person landing event hosted by Firefly in the Austin, Texas, area may request media credentials through this form by Monday, Feb. 24.

Following the landing, NASA and Firefly will host a news conference to discuss the mission and science opportunities that lie ahead as they begin lunar surface operations. The time of the briefing will be shared after touchdown.  

Blue Ghost launched Jan. 15, at 1:11 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander is carrying a suite of 10 NASA scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, which will provide insights into the Moon’s environment and test technologies to support future astronauts landing safely on the lunar surface, as well as Mars.

NASA continues to work with multiple American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface through the agency’s CLPS initiative. This pool of companies may bid on contracts for end-to-end lunar delivery services, including payload integration and operations, launching from Earth, and landing on the surface of the Moon. NASA’s CLPS contracts are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a cumulative maximum value of $2.6 billion through 2028. In February 2021, the agency awarded Firefly this delivery of 10 NASA science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon using its American-designed and -manufactured lunar lander for approximately $93.3 million (modified to $101.5 million).

Through the Artemis campaign, commercial robotic deliveries will perform science experiments, test technologies, and demonstrate capabilities on and around the Moon to help NASA explore in advance of Artemis Generation astronaut missions to the lunar surface, and ultimately crewed missions to Mars.

Watch, engage on social media 

Let people know you’re following the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by using the hashtag #Artemis. You can also stay connected by following and tagging these accounts: 

X: @NASA, @NASA_Johnson, @NASAArtemis, @NASAMoon 

Facebook: NASA, NASAJohnsonSpaceCenter, NASAArtemis 

Instagram: @NASA, @NASAJohnson, @NASAArtemis 

For more information about the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative: 

https://www.nasa.gov/clps

-end- 

Karen Fox / Alise Fisher 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1600  
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov  

Natalia Riusech / Nilufar Ramji
Johnson Space Center, Houston 
281-483-5111 
natalia.s.riusech@nasa.gov / nilufar.ramji@nasa.gov