The Google Lunar X-prize contender Moon Express has ordered three Rocket lab Electron launches in its bid to win the US$20 million prize. Two of the launches will take place in 2017 from the Rocket Lab’s Kaitorete Spit launch site in New Zealand. Both of these will be carrying a very small sub-10kg “hopping” lander dubbed the MX-1, the operation of which will win the prize by moving more than 500m on the lunar surface.
Rocket Lab intends to fly the maiden flight of its new Electron launch vehicle by the end of this year.
The Electron orbital launcher is a three-stage rocket with LOx/kerosene-powered first and second stages, and a solid rocket-powered third stage. It has been designed to deliver 110kg (243lbs) of payload to a defined sun-synchronous class orbit of 500km (310 miles). Electron is 16m in length, 1.2m in diameter and has a lift-off mass of 12,800kg. It uses carbon-composite for the entire structure of the vehicle including the tankage.
The first stage is powered by a cluster of nine of the indigenously-developed liquid rocket Rutherford engines which are regenerative cooled. The Rutherford engine makes use of electric turbo-pumps and the majority of its components are 3D printed.
The combined lift-off thrust of the nine first stage engines is 120kN, with a peak thrust of 146kN. The second stage uses a single Rutherford engine optimised for vacuum conditions, and with a thrust of 18kN.
Unrelated to that bid is a plan reported in Space News by a crowd-funded European firm called Moon Spike to try to build a three-stage very small launch vehicle of its own, along with a 150kg transfer spacecraft, to place picosatellite-class payloads onto the Moon.
