Small spaceship to fly through gravity tunnel

Small spaceship to fly through gravity tunnel

Spice, the final frontier

By INQUIRER staff
12 juli 2005, 15:49
Source

ANDREWS SPACE OF SEATTLE has awarded SpaceDev a contract to design a small spacecraft to travel through a gravity tunnel - part of the InterPlanetary Superhighway or IPS, a route that eats up less fuel than normal trajectories - to the moon, for the very first time ever.

The overall aim of the programne is to "design, develop, launch and operate a small low-cost spacecraft called SmallTug" which will be sent on a mission to the Lunar L1 point, where it will be demonstrating advanced orbital mechanics in aid of NASA's robotic exploration of the Moon and of Mars.

This contract is only the first phase of the programme, costing about $1.25 million. The prime contractor will be Andrews Space and SpaceDev as the primary subcontractor, however, later on the NASA contract will be managed by the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

SpaceDev chairman and CEO Jim Benson says the project is important to him and his company. He says it's important because "it is SpaceDev's first opportunity to design a deep space vehicle" and because the total cost of the mission is less than $20 million dollars.

If the second phase of the contract is awarded by both NASA and Andrews, then SpaceDev will be the one responsible for building and preparing SmallTug for its launch in 2008. The mission will result in the spacecraft resulting in a halo orbit around the Lunar Lagrange L1 point, which is approximately 85% of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.