Main Engine Cut Off - T+166: Laura Klicker and Daniel Gillies, Astrobotic

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Two members of the Astrobotic team join me for a conversation: Laura Klicker, Payload Systems Management Lead, and Daniel Gillies, Mission Director for the Griffin/VIPER mission. We talk about Astrobotic’s first Peregrine mission coming up next year, the very exciting VIPER mission to the south pole of the Moon in 2023, payload management across multiple flights, the technical aspects of their various vehicles, and a whole lot more.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 38 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and seven anonymous—and 397 other supporters.TopicsAstroboticCareers | AstroboticPeregrine Lander | AstroboticGriffin Lander | AstroboticAstrobotic Awarded $79.5 Million Contract to Deliver 14 NASA Payloads to the Moon | AstroboticAstrobotic Awarded $5.6 Million NASA Contract to Deliver Autonomous Moon Rover | AstroboticAstrobotic Awarded $199.5 Million Contract to Deliver NASA Moon Rover | AstroboticAstrobotic to Develop New Commercial Payload Service for NASA’s Human Landing System | AstroboticThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterBuy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off ShopMusic by Max Justus

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and we are back with two special guests today. Told you I had some good interviews coming up and today's a good one. We are talking with a couple of members of Astrobotic. They are a company that has two different commercial lunar payload services contracts with NASA. Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, as I'm sure you'll hear us refer to it as, is a program that NASA is running to bid out different awards for missions to the lunar surface. This is kind of a commercial cargo-esque, firm fixed price awards that commercial companies bid for. They compete on technical basis and price, and they fly awards that commercial companies bid for. They compete on technical basis and price, and they fly these missions to the lunar surface. Astrobotic has two

different ones flying. They're going to be flying their Peregrine Lander that does about 90-something kilograms to the lunar surface, and their Griffin Lander that does about 500 kilograms. That latter award is for the Viper rover that NASA is working on that will be looking for volatiles around the lunar south pole as a precursor mission to be able to develop lunar resources into useful resources for human missions to the lunar surface. So today we are talking with Laura Clicker, who is the payload systems management lead at Astrobotic, and Daniel Gillies, who is the mission director for the Griffin mission that I was just talking about. So they've both got really interesting insights to provide us with on the both fronts of these two different missions that are obviously sharing a lot of technical

commonality, but do diverge heavily in what they're both going after. So I'm really excited to talk with them. And if you remember, if you've listened for a long time, we have now, this will be the cycle of us talking to all of the different currently confirmed commercial lunar payload services program providers. We've talked with Mast in Space, we've talked with Intuitive Machines, and now we're rounding it out here with Astrobotics. So without further ado, let's give Laura and Daniel a call. Laura and Daniel, welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. It's a pleasure to have you both here on this all Pennsylvania edition of the show. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

So we've got maybe to start to deal with a two guest situation and everyone out there listening, keeping track of everything. I'd love to hear both of you just run down what your roles are at Astrobotic and maybe a little bit of what your day-to-day work looks like so that everyone has context as we get into all these different topics. So we'll go Laura first, if you don't mind. Oh, yeah. So I'm the lead payload manager here at Astrobotic. I've been working here for four years. Started off with our commercial payloads, of course, and then we won the task order to a and so i was working with

those payloads i just totally messed up the two names didn't i task order two and task order 20a i've just mashed them together in one so yeah no i started off with that one and worked with those nasa payloads then we won task order 20a and i've been working with those payloads as we continue to hire. So my day-to-day is lots of emailing back and forth with the payloads, getting the clarity on some interfaces, services, operations, and taking those notes to the engineers on our side and making sure at the end that it's all going to come together and work. So you mentioned the two different task orders. Are those both for the Peregrine mission that we'll talk about? Are those the internal and the external payload orders, or are those something else?

Those are, one was for the Peregrine, and the other one is for the New Griffin mission. Got it. Okay, cool. And then Daniel, how about you? Sure. Daniel Gillies, I am the mission director for our griffin mission carrying viper so my day-to-day at astrobotic is pretty much program management whether that's the budget our staffing for the mission coordinating with our payload management team which laura manages our systems and engineering team which another colleague colleague of ours, Sean, manages, and the rest of the engineering groups who are supporting Griffin, and really just making sure

we come together for an executable mission, staying on schedule, staying in cost, and having a good customer experience as well. My background's rockets, primarily before this, and mission management roles at a variety of different size rockets, dedicated in rideshare. Also worked on helicopters, airplanes, and started on space shuttle. Wow. So you're trying to get the full cycle here. You got wings, rocket engines, now landing legs. You're going for the whole circuit of vehicles. I know. I got balloons in there too. I'm trying to think of what platform I missed. I think I got them all. I think that's it. That's a full cycle for sure.

Hovercraft? I don't know if that counts. So yeah, Astrobotic, you've got two missions on the manifest here for the commercial lunar payload services. You were one of the original award manifest here for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services. You're one of the original award winners back in the day for that first mission for Peregrine. That's got about 95 kilograms of space. We're, I believe, about a year out from that mission, the last timeline I saw. So, Lara, could you talk us through that mission profile generally? You know, we've got launch on the Vulcan, first launch of the Vulcan, Centaur. And then could you just walk us through what that mission looks like from there all the way down to the lunar surface?

Oh, sure. Yeah. So launch, that's going to be happening. Then we separate from the launch vehicle. And after that, we sort of begin. I mean, we break it out into these really simple phases for payloads. We begin the transit phase, which we sort of divided up into cruise, which is everything between separation from the launch vehicle until we insert into lunar orbit. And then lunar orbit, we have three of those. First one, just get into lunar orbit. Second one

is a bit more stable. And then the third one is in preparation of descent. During that time, we're going to be supporting some payload checkouts, but that's really not where the main mission is happening. So the excitement all starts when we do our descent orbit insertion. And then we have our unpowered descent and then our power descent that takes less than two hours, I believe. During that, no payloads are going to be doing anything, but that is going to be sort of the really critical phase of our mission. After that, we'll land, we'll turn on our higher gain antennas, and that's when the payloads really get to do their exciting science, sort of the short version. Yeah, so are there payloads that are going to take use of that transit phase? Or is that something that, you know, you could support

in the future, but this mission doesn't have it, given it's the first and you're kind of breaking some ground here? Or is that something they're going to be taking advantage of? Some payloads are going to be taking some interesting science or data points during transit, especially to get a comparison to what the data they would be taking on the surface. There is also the opportunity to deploy in orbit. So we're not actually having any payloads take advantage of that on the first mission. But that is definitely a potential for future missions for payloads to take advantage of that. And then Daniel, on the Griffin side of things, you've got a bigger lander there. You're up in the 400 kilogram range, if I'm remembering

my numbers correctly. Obviously, you've got a giant rover on top called Viper that is the main focus of this mission. But are there going to be other payloads involved in this mission as well? Kind of the same mission profile? or are there other differences between the Peregrine flight and the Griffin flight? Sure. First, so the payload complement on Task Order 20A, also known as our Griffin-Viper mission, it includes Viper, which is a 475 kilogram payload. That includes the Viper rover, as well as the separation system, what actually attaches it to the lander. And there's actually a NASA retrofactor as well.

So, you know, you could do ranging experiments from Earth. Pretty much one of those seems to fly on every mission going to the moon at this point. So that's pretty exciting. As far as other payloads not not really in the plan and this is more or less a dedicated mission for these two nasa payloads and the equipment that we're carrying on the rover has been really um tailored and the rover on the lander i should say tailored exactly to that uh so for example there is a dual ramp system uh on griffin uh to allow uh viper to egress in one one of two directions so that in the event there was something on the surface, you still have a way off. That really begins to drive your payload accommodations in many ways, and we don't want to do anything that would jeopardize Viper's mission objectives.

As far as the mission profile, it's actually very similar to everything that Laura described for Peregrine. Everything we really are doing on Griffin has some basis in Peregrine, whether that's from a con ops, hardware architecture, or just how we plan ops once we get on the surface. Although for this mission, really the goal is get Viper to the surface and allow Viper to safely egress from Griffin. After that, it's all bonus. But that is our primary objective, deliver Viper to the moon and allow it to egress onto the surface. I want to talk a lot about the different payload interfaces on both landers. But I do want to get into one thing about, you know, more on the management side and

the interaction with NASA on both of these. I know in the early days, and I think some of these are changing the way that this functions on the later CLPS payloads, but you're going to need to correct me here where I'm wrong. Originally, there was, I think in the earliest round, you could bid and say, we will take this collection of payloads to the lunar surface. And then maybe in the later era of CLPS that we're entering, it's more of a PI-led process for determining what's going to fly to where. I don't know how much I just got wrong there. So Laura, could you maybe correct us on the interaction that you have with NASA and what

the manifest for your flight, how that comes together and starts in the early development days and goes all the way through launch and deployment? So I'm not quite sure. I guess on NASA's side, the way they're putting together the manifests, I know that we did get one manifest from NASA, and I do work directly with those PIs as well as a NASA person that sort of looks over the entire manifest. So that way, it's making sure that the individual NASA payload science is going to be achieved, but then also making sure that the task force as a whole, everything that was in there as a contract, is also being respected by both parties. So I'm not sure if I quite answered your question. No, no, that's definitely good.

So I'm not sure if I quite answered your question. No, no, that's definitely good. Yeah, and then in the case of Vipers, you're talking about that. That is the main and only payload for the Griffin flight. But on the Peregrine side, you're going to have a collection of payloads making up the entire mission. You do have a couple of different interfaces. Could you talk us through the spots on the Peregrine lander that different payloads will be able to take advantage of uh on the lunar surface yeah so um we do have the decks that's mostly the very standard location for our payloads um there's underneath the deck so we have a lot of payloads that want to look at the lunar surface um some want to see the transition from light to dark, some from dark to light. So you can be on different sides

of the spacecraft. There's on top of the decks, that's mostly for radiation sensors or other things that want to look out into the sky. We're actually placing our retroreflector for that mission up by our solar panel. So that's a very special location. But other than that, it's mostly very, very similar, at least mechanical interface-wise, for all of the payloads. The other interfaces are also very, very similar. We have standard data and power interfaces. The operations are probably where it gets the most interesting for the differences between payloads. So some payloads have one mission that they want to time, I guess, three days in, and it's only going to take an hour. Other payloads want to be continuous throughout. And then, of course, we have rovers that are going

to deploy, and then their interfaces change very drastically. So... Now, is that setup kind of the basic Peregrine setup um or in the future if peregrine flies again or when it flies again uh are you expecting there to be changes in that configuration or is this kind of like the you know peregrine 101 that we're dealing with on this first mission so we definitely want to keep interfaces standard and we definitely want to keep interfaces that work i mean we are adapting to the needs of the science community so especially for future missions we're looking at more things like data storage so there's definitely room for things to change but we'd like to keep things as consistent

for our ease and for the ease of the science community. And Daniel on the Gryphon side obviously you're already specializing this uh a lot for this initial mission um how far down the development of griffin or you know the the work that was already ongoing with griffin when viper came in how much of a diversion from the standard payload interfaces is viper's mission and could you give us a sense of you know a mission that isn't flying a rover in a very specialized way, what the lander setup would look like for something like that? Yeah, actually, there's a lot of work that was done before going into this mission officially. So we had actually our Griffin configuration prior to this was actually already configured for a large rover of our own called Polaris

that was on top of Griffin. And that is where the dual ramp system was actually developed, at least to a prototype stage. Obviously, it didn't fly. But that set up the basis. Griffin was designed with the thought of having a very large payload on top and very likely a rover on top. That being said, there actually is a deck system very similar to Peregrine. So there is a significant amount of space on the vehicle for carrying, say, the same complement of payloads that we have on our first Peregrine mission. We could carry those on Griffin, just in a slightly different place. So it's configurable in that way. Looking to the future, you could use your imagination here a little bit.

While there will be mission-specific hardware like the ramp system for a large rover, let's say we didn't have a large rover. Let's say someone wanted to bring an orbital spacecraft to the moon. Well, you can imagine if VIPER was not there for the next Griffin mission after, all theoretical, you could put a deployable satellite there and deploy it in lunar orbit and then continue down to lunar surface, carrying all the other payloads kind of nested under your wings on the deck of Griffin. So it is very configurable from that regard. I do want to go back to the question you asked earlier about

kind of the payload manifest and how it's coming to us. You're exactly right that on the first mission, there was the ability to say, I will take this to the moon. And that is why the three original contenders on the TO2 task order had a different payload manifest. Not everyone's the same. So Intuitive Machines has a very different configuration than we do on our Peregrine. And we're also carrying a number of commercial payloads on Peregrine. Going forward, the way the task orders have been set up have been asking, it's kind of all or nothing. So bring all of this to the surface. That doesn't preclude you from flying commercial payloads. That is your choice as a payload service provider, as a landing service provider.

But really, it's all or nothing. That creates its own set of unique requirements and challenges. I think we're open to both constructs in the future where we're asked to bring a whole complement of payloads to the moon, or if there's a request for one payload to go to the moon as part of one of our future commercial missions. Either one of those is something we're open to, and we know NASA's thinking the same way. So we look forward to future task orders. It sounds like something that, you know, as somebody who's worked on the rocket side, and the launch services side, it's very similar to a lot of the task orders or the

launch contracts that get signed on that side of things where somebody has a primary payload, and if you've got extra space, you can sell it. Is that? That's obviously not a coincidence that that's the way that this is structured now in the future. No, you're exactly right. And in some ways, if you really, really think about it, the lander is almost an extension of the rocket and the launch service. We're effectively a really, really sophisticated upper stage. We get dropped off at a TLI point. So we get all that energy from the rocket.

But then we've got a coast to the moon. And when we get to lunar orbit, we've got to do a breaking burn. So there we're acting very much like a stage. And then there's a series of other burns that get us all the way down to the surface. So yeah, and effectively, you know, a big part of the lander is the propulsion system. It's a large part of the mass, a large part of the structure. So in my mind, I think about it very much like a launch service, except we're providing some really specialized functions. It kind of emerges the hosted payload mindset, which is like all of the payloads that are on our Peregrine mission are effectively just hosted payloads in some regards, except for the little rovers that go off on their own. On the Viper mission, it's much more like a traditional

launch service contract. They come on top of us. We actually don't even meet with the flight hardware until we get to the launch site for payload integration, very much like a launch service. And then after that, we're an integrated stack and we go all the way together to the moon that way. It's interesting to look at the similarities in the Peregrine side among, you know, the early award winners for Clipse. The landers that were selected, so you've got Peregrine, you've got Mastin's lander and Intuitive Machine's lander and intuitive machines lander they look very similar in terms of their metrics their size and shape and the format of what the lander you know kind of sits on the surface the way that it sits on the surface is very similar which is extremely different than we're getting off topic now but the human landing awards that were given out recently those look incredibly different from

you know competitor to competitor and then now we see see with Griffin, it's a different format, and we obviously don't see what everyone else bid for this mission. But you can kind of assume the demands of a rover going to the lunar surface would require something like this. Do you, is there anything that we should make of the way that there's kind of a convergent evolution in the sense of how these lunar landers are shaped and function? Is there something, you know, intrinsic to these missions that require that? Or do you feel like it's, you know, there's something else that's pushing everyone in the same general direction? It's a really good question. I think there's a few different ways to approach that. One, while they may look the same for the first set, they actually have some very different internals and guts. So we made the decision to use storable propellant on our entire series of landers. So

that's a MON-MMH combination compared to cryogenics that some of our competitors are using. That means our ops are very different than those of our competitors. We think simpler and kind of more similar to what you'd see on a geobus, for example, having to do that big, big boost from a lower Earth orbit all the way up to geo and really designed for a longer duration mission. So we're definitely thinking to the future in that way. As far as why they're starting to look the same otherwise, power demands are very similar. So when you go to the pole, for example, you're going to start to see landers that have solar panels surrounding their exterior, usually as the simplest case. It's not the only solution, though. You could go for articulated surfaces, for example, deployables, but there's a complexity trade. So I think what you'll see initially, especially what

we're seeing with Clips, you're seeing the design decisions for the most part that make the most sense for the target prices that we need to hit, the risk level that everyone's willing to accept, and really to do it the first time. After you've flown a mission or two, you'll get comfortable and you'll probably begin to see them diverge and specialize more for each of their own independent you know niche that they're they're catering to whether that's driven by the payloads or it's driven by the particular part of the moon they want to go to an all-purpose lander is gonna look very different than a polar Pacific specific or a mid latitude specific lander so those are some of the things I think you have to keep in mind.

Yeah, that's really good to consider, especially when you're looking at all these different conceptual designs. There's a lot of companies in CLPS, right? They've all put out a diagram of what their lander looks like. So it's good to assess the influences they all have. Now, a minute ago, Daniel mentioned the fact that there are commercial payloads that would be flying as part of these same CLPS missions. So Laura, from your perspective, handling all of these different kinds of organizations that are providing

payloads, you've got NASA in one hand that are, it's kind of the tenant or the anchor tenant of these missions, but you do have other commercial partners that are coming into this outside of the CLPS program. What is that interaction like? How do you find people that are coming into this outside of the CLIPS program. What is that interaction like? How do you find people that are willing to pay money to fly to the moon? And how does their interaction differ than the interaction with the CLIPS provided payloads? I suppose my interaction starts at the point where they've already decided to pay the money to fly to the moon. So you don't have to convince them at that point. That's great. Yeah. That's someone else's job. But it is a different experience, an interesting

cast of characters always. So NASA, they've done space before they have their processes and all these documents. So they know what they're doing in a lot of cases. And that makes it simple in some sense. But they were also a higher risk sort of commercial program. So sometimes it's difficult to convince them that, no, this is fine. We don't need 20 forms for this. And for the commercial ones, it's sort of, can be sort of the other way around. They're as excited as we are and willing to make things work in unique, different ways, but it's also, okay, well, we still have all of these do no harm requirements that we need to do. So it's coming at it from two different sort of

angles, different risk approaches, I think is mostly the biggest difference for, yeah. What is the relative sizes of, not in terms of like mass, but maybe amount of payloads? What is the breakdown between payloads that we're flying that are NASA payloads versus, you know, what portion of the flight would be a commercial provider external to NASA? So for our first mission, it's sort of almost half-half amount-wise. Mass-wise, I don't think it falls quite that direction, but it's about half-half. think it falls quite that direction, but it's about half-half. So that's more significant than I would have guessed. Does that seem to indicate that there might be sufficient demand to fly a mission that isn't just a CLPS mission in the hypothetical world long in the future? Is there something in the next couple of years that would be

not a CLPS-led mission? Do you think that's in the cards? I think so. I mean, there's tons of other government agencies out there, universities and then private industries. And maybe it's probably not going to be a Griffin mission of commercial payloads. But I think there's definitely enough interest out there. definitely enough interest out there. And once we see that these CLPS-led missions land and are safe and can get us there, I think a lot more interest will also be given to future missions. Oh, it's proven that it can work. So now more people are willing to invest money in commercial lander providers. And, you know, we're really seeing an uptick in that interest right now.

Think the fact that now we've not only are committed to deliver the payloads on Peregrine but we're pushing forward on the Griffin mission with Viper. It's really built confidence within the industry like the interest has always been there but it's when that interest converts into actual dollars in the commercial world and we're seeing it happen. So we definitely, we would love to fly a fully commercial mission, but that's not going to mean, you know, if NASA has a payload, well, of course, it could fly on the mission as well. It just, it depends on where they want to go, what they want to do and what their form factor is. I mean, even to say that, you know, there won't be a commercial mission with Griffin, well, really, it's dependent on the payload. If there were a large deployable satellite that we wanted to carry along,

Griffin's well set up for that. A large rover, obviously, Griffin is well set up for that. Or just a smorgasbord of payloads that want to go to the pole will have already done it. So that provides some really interesting opportunities and maybe even pre-positioning for some of the manned missions in the future as well. Sample return seems like one that's ripe for something a little bit bigger the size of Griffin. I assume, you know, that's enough space to do something like that. Is that something that, I mean, obviously who's not interested in doing a sample return mission? But do you think Griffin would have the payload capacity to pull something off like that? I think it just depends on the specific amount of sample you want to bring back.

Just put a peregrine on a Griffin and we're ready to go, right? Yeah, there you go. So for your perspective on the Griffin mission, I think there's a mindset thing coming at this as the second mission to go up, you know, for Astrobotic. Uh, well, I guess you could count, uh, Moon Ranger, right, as the second mission. Uh, but the, the second dedicated lander mission, are, are there things that you are taking from the team that's working on the Peregrine mission and lessons that you're learning from their side, anything that you're doing differently than the first time through, uh, given that they're, you they're a year or whatever it is ahead of the Griffin mission from

this point? Every process we apply is being tested out with Peregrine. And really, it's not like we created these things from scratch. A lot of the processes that we follow at Astrobotic are based in more traditional NASA systems engineering management plan, for example. A lot of us know that by heart, and we've applied it in how we do business. So to give examples, the payload management process, that is more internally tailored. That's something Laura has really led. We've learned from that. We are tweaking it and adjusting it as we apply it to a singular payload versus a whole variety of them and really understanding what's needed when, what interfaces really matter, which ones do you have more flexibility on, scheduling. Honestly,

for anyone who's coming into this new, like, hey, you're a company and you want to come build a lunar lander, there's a lot you're going to learn the first time around a lot of your assumptions from the spacecraft world might get blown out of the water so having that experience on peregrine is just so important and and that's why within astrobotic you know we really are we don't have dedicated teams in the sense that uh someone only works on peregrine that someone only works on Peregrine or someone only works on Griffin. Within our Planetary Landers group, we have what's called a matrix organization. So we have common leads. So like Laura is the lead of the payload management team, but within her team, she'll pick people from the team to work Peregrine, work Griffin,

and sometimes they might cross over. And that's good because then knowledge is transferred and all those lessons learned are transferred organically versus, you know, having to, to force them through some really rigid process. So yeah, I, I am, I am so grateful that we are flying that Peregrine mission first, or even just designing it first and where it is in its development, all the vendor relationships that we've set up, all of the partners, it's just awesome. Now, one of the primary differences in terms of getting to the finish line for these

is that the Griffin mission is obviously, if Viper's not ready to fly, the mission's not ready to fly. On the Peregrine side, there's quite a few payloads that are involved in this case. So, Laura, this might be something that you could talk to about. What is the driving factor for the schedule of Peregrine mission? Is it a critical mass of payloads being ready to go? Is it the case that if one is delayed, the whole thing is

delayed? How does that play out in terms of scheduling the actual flight? I think the driving factor for M1 is really going to be mostly launch on our side. The manifest is closed, so I think if the manifest weren't closed, it would be probably a different story. But this is also coming from all the other sites as well, all of these payloads. A lot of them are already ready to go, and it's just a matter of making sure that we integrate them on time and all of that. I don't think one payload is going to delay the whole launch. Payloads that aren't ready, we're also working with them and seeing if we can move them on future missions since there's interest in that as well.

So we're not trying to kick anyone off and we're also not trying to delay the launch for one singular payload. I think it's sort of a team effort in that sense. Yeah. I mean, like missing the bus is annoying, but you know, there's another one coming a couple of minutes down the line, right? And that's the strength of Clips is that it is this series of missions. It's not like, you know, the Peregrine flight is a complete one-off, which historically was the worry that there's only one chance to get there, so you've got to be ready at the time. So exactly that's definitely you know that's a really good indicator that that's going to be a

fun flight to watch and not something that is because we've heard horror stories probably in daniel's past over at the launch services companies of uh some rideshare missions getting really messy considering how many payloads there are um but it seems like you know things are going to be a little bit more sane on on your end here uh in terms of the the flight so to that end though the fact that clips is a series of missions there are these other providers i've had uh members of mastin and the intuitive machines uh teams on the on the show before so this is you know in the way that daniel has worked in every form of locomotion in the world i've now talked to all the clips providers um they've talked a little bit about some crossover between the teams in terms of form of locomotion in the world, I've now talked to all the Eclipse providers.

They've talked a little bit about some crossover between the teams in terms of, you know, helping each other out to some extent that you're trying to solve similar missions. Is that something that is continuing to this day? What kind of firewalls are in place? And is this kind of a team effort? Daniel, you were talking about this a second ago, internal to astrobotic, so maybe you could talk about external to Astrobotic as well. Well, you know, there are venues within the Eclipse program for all the vendors to get together on the same call and ask questions. So that forum always exists. We welcome our competitors to reach out to us. If there are things, subsystems that maybe, oh, hey, they want to fly it on an earlier mission, reach out to us if they're things subsystems that maybe um oh hey they want to fly

it on an earlier mission reach out to us um they want to collaborate on something that we all need together reach out to us um something that um you know i i'm beginning to see and then i'm thinking we're going to push a lot harder for is on things like communication standards um there are different approaches to how you communicate with the moon within RF as well as the kind of. Up and coming of laser com and there are other NASA assets there to be orbiting around the moon in the next few years-

that will have communications capabilities all those things are really exciting- but if you're not in alignment with encoding- standards- frequencies of its RF, or system design in terms of laser comm, well, it's not really going to work. It's not going to really help develop a commercial market for that. So I'm really already looking at ways that we can strengthen those partnerships and communications with other clips providers.

There are foreign landers that are on their way to the moon or in design phase right now. We'd love to chat with all of them to maybe get some level of standardization, because it'll be to everyone's benefit, right, at the end of the day. Certainly, as using Mars as an example with how many landed assets are relaying communications through the orbiters. That's something that I've been interested in, and you brought it up here in terms of communication on the lunar surface. On a recent Viper press call, I asked a question about the communications that Viper would be using during the mission, whether it's direct to Earth or relayed through the lander.

It sounded like all of those were looked into. They're going with direct to Earth at this point. But, you know, the South Pole is obviously, there's some interesting aspects when it comes to communication. Could you talk a little bit about the communications aspect of Griffin and the capabilities you have, things that you've looked into, and how you ended up on the route that you're going with here? Yeah. And our communication system is sized for the mission requirements, because really, it is something that's a bit more modular compared to other elements of the lander. So we could always swap to a different comm system, integrate it, or even have more than one if it came down to that.

So on Griffin, we obviously also do direct to Earth. There is no relay. Viper is sitting on top of us. They're chatting with Deep deep space network- on our Peregrine mission one we chat with DSN. DSN is definitely an option for Griffin but we're actually really focused on

looking forward- and working with commercial comms providers with Griffin which is pretty exciting. And we know that's something that NASA is pushing towards in terms of encouraging- the commercial market to kind of meld more with comms and deep space comms.

So we're going to push that forward too with Griffin on this particular mission with Viper. Really won't change anything about our architecture. We use the same communications architecture that we have on Peregrine with the difference being we've added a high gain antenna for operation at the South Pole, as there are certain considerations with lunar terrain, low angles, basically. You're just shooting right over the surface, direct towards Earth when it's above the horizon, and that can create some unique challenges for comms. So on the way to the Moon, VIPER communicates with Earth directly.

It actually does pass data through Griffin. All that's through a hard line. And then when we get to the surface, we both go off and do our own merry way and communicate with Earth directly as well. I will mention on the Peregrine mission, however, we do have Wi-Fi. So we have the capability already to do rover to lander to Earth. However, with Griffin Viper, that wasn't even a requirement. And you can imagine why. The rover continues on for a much longer duration mission. The lander's there to do one job job and it's to deliver the rover.

And after that, it's pretty much mission complete. So that requirement didn't exist. That would just be more scope and more scope growth to be able to last and provide that communication service. But could we do it? Absolutely. We're already doing it. And it really just depends on what the top level mission requirements are and objectives. I do want to add in the future, you know, part of our plan for these landers has always been to act as a service provider on the lunar surface, whether that's power, comms, you name it. So that is absolutely part of our architecture.

But I think as you see us working on commercial missions coming down the line, you'll start to see more of those services made available. Yeah, and to your point about the, you know, the topography that you're dealing with, where Griffin is going for this mission, on that call that I mentioned, they did say that there's going to be times that they're out of sight of the lander anyway, because they're going into some craters and things like that. So it made more sense to do direct to Earth and unfortunately can't rely on any given satellite being overhead at any that. So it made more sense to do direct to Earth and unfortunately can't rely on any given satellite being overhead at any time.

So it makes sense and it goes to your point of saying that you've got to build landers specialized to the location that you're going to. There's many differences between where these things are heading. So it's just cool to see how much diversity in terms of architecture we're having now that we've got a bunch of flights manifested. So as the space nerd, I am particularly excited about it.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you can build. I mean, in the end, the bus is generic. It's think of it as the mission kit that you want to fly. You're not going to bring hardware to a mid-latitude location that you don't need there. Same thing at the pole, though at the pole, you pretty much, you need it all. That's going to really be the performance driver for our missions.

When you begin to talk about the far side, well, then it's even more unique. But don't think of them as custom design landers. They're more of custom configured. So pull out that option, pull out that configuration kit to go to a specific location, just like you'd put on your jacket to go outside in the cold or shorts to go to the pool. I love that analogy. Laura, I don't know if this is something that we'll be able to dive

too deeply into at this point, but I did see an announcement a couple of months ago now that uh you're working with dynetics on their human landing system uh to provide payload services commercial payload services for that human landing system as well is there some background that you give us on that program itself how it functions and what we might see there in the future obviously given that they are in study phase they're under contract so i know it might be touchy but maybe there's some stuff that we can talk about there. I suppose this can go back to the point that Daniel was making. The more standard the interfaces are across the industry, the better it is for all of us. So you're developing a payload, and then you only have to develop it to one standard, and you can fly it on these 10 different landers. That's

better for you, and it's better for us because all of these payloads are coming to us with a standard interface. So I think that's sort of one of the goals of this is to help develop a standard interface that makes it easier for payloads and for us to be able to accommodate each other on the way to the moon. That's cool. So, yeah, I mean, it sounded like the way you were talking before about if any payload needs to shift between flights, that is made easier by having standardized interfaces in the same way that any given launch service provider can re-manifest a CubeSat per deployers.

That's kind of the idea there. But I guess for hosted payloads mainly is the idea here. That's interesting. Well, I'm looking at my list. You two are just blowing through answers here. You're too efficient for my list here. The one thing I wanted to touch on with Griffin, this is my last question that I have not asked yet.

I was personally surprised that NASA was willing to double up on a particular provider for these early flights of Clips. But clearly there's major technical and business reasons that they went with Griffin. So what is it that you think is the competitive advantage that allowed Griffin to win the Viper mission? Absolutely. Like I mentioned, we had a design on the table. We weren't coming into this blind with, okay, let's go. What do we need to do for Viper?

It's like, oh, let's just adapt what we've already done. And yeah, I mean, in a way, it was waiting for Viper to materialize. I think that really set us apart quite a bit. We went as far as our prototype went through a modal test. We had done deployment tests on the ramp, significant prototyping. This was a major effort. Actually, I believe that predates some of the work on Peregrine itself back in the earlier days of the company. So it's always been on our mind. It's not something that we just dreamt up yesterday. Also, these systems are being proven, if you will.

Many of them already are proven systems, but they're being moon proven on Peregrine. So just the fact that we put that mission into space, it gets to the moon, it lands on the moon. Every single step is another checkbox that helps us validate our approach for Griffin. As far as I know, none of the other Clips-level competitors could really say that on the apples-for-apples comparison, because we're also able to do that at a Clips price, at a price that's comparable to what we're offering if really not better in some

regards um on a price per kilogram basis than peregrine um so it's not uh the exquisite solution if you want to compare it to the um leo and geosat world it's the right solution for the mission and that's what nasa was looking for it's pretty crazy how the payload range worked out perfectly for what was already designed for Griffin, that it fits in perfectly, like you're saying, it was almost made for it. But yeah, that's the thing, right? There was a lot of landers that could have been chosen that are much larger payload classes, which come with a much larger price tag. So exactly, it's all about that balance, as you're saying. And that's why even on the launch side,

you know, people talk about price per kilogram. And that's good. But if you have to buy the whole thing, sometimes that's not a useful metric. It's like getting a really good price on apples, but you have to buy a truckload of apples. And you're like, I just wanted a couple of apples for lunch. I don't need all of those apples. That is exactly right. It does kind of seem like that was the way that it went there so uh well is there anything that should have been on my question list here either in the payload section for laura or the griffin side for daniel i think we covered a lot of great things no it's super exciting to be working with all of these commercial nasa payloads and i i think it's going to be really interesting

to i mean as we come up on the launch of pereine and keep working on Griffin, there should be a lot of more exciting news coming, hopefully. Interesting updates. Cool. I will add, you know, a lot of people that we talk to are interested in getting involved. And that comes from those who are straight out of school to those who have been working in the space industry for decades and bring a wealth of experience. The common answer you get as to why they want to come and join our missions and join Astrobotic has been they really want to work on a lunar mission. There's so much excitement to be involved in going to the moon. I mean, it's right there.

You see it almost every night. So it's so attainable. So many people also grew up either with Apollo or following Apollo, and there being a lack there of access to the moon from a U.S. perspective. And the fact we're able to bring that back is really exciting. So I will say, if there are others out there who are interested in joining a lunar mission, and not just one but two and more to come, please check out our website. We have a variety of positions open, and we're always looking for the right candidate to join our team. And I do love Pittsburgh from the other side of the state here. I don't like the Penguins or really any of your sports teams, but I do very much enjoy

the city. I've always had a good time there. you know everyone can't be perfect but um uh and i say this having grown up in the philadelphia area myself um yeah pittsburgh it is an underappreciated city um it is like a little seattle and that's what people really need to understand like if you're looking at jobs in the seattle area because you like the area same things here like amazing cultural diversity, tons of outdoors surrounded by the city, three rivers, not just one. That's pretty cool. And there's actually, while the space industry here is new, there's a strong tech industry, like a really, really strong tech industry in Pittsburgh. So if you decide, you know what, the moon just isn't for me anymore, there are other options. You're not really pigeonholed here so i i encourage people to uh

give pittsburgh a chance and definitely yeah more so than philadelphia but there's definitely good food here yes one one time i uh this is totally random but i was in pittsburgh one time and i randomly stumbled into pierogi fest oh yes which was amazing they were out of pierogis so i was incredibly bummed like i i got there while the lines were filled and everyone told me they were out of pierogies. And I was, it was simultaneously the most exciting and most disappointing moment of my life. Pierogies are definitely the way. That's for sure. I did meet the pierogies that are at the baseball games. They were there. So it wasn't a total loss. Not many other places you can do that.

No. So anyway, thank you both so much for being on the show. I hope once we're all through the pandemic, I can take a drive over and hang out in person at some point or maybe even be down there for the launch. We're getting pretty close here. So I'm excited for that. And thank you both again for for hanging out for a while here. Thank you. And you're always welcome. Thank you again to Laura and Daniel for coming on the show. It was a pleasure talking with them. And I am much more informed now on what is going on over there. And I'm really excited to watch some of these Eclipse missions fly.

I've continued to said that, you know, while Artemis is getting all of the headlines and getting all of the focus and getting all of the politicking, Eclipse is kind of flying under the radar and is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, NASA program that is currently running just because it's going to lead to some really amazing missions. And they're not too far away. You know, we're maybe a year from the first one getting off the launch pad and heading out to the moon. So this is coming quicker than you think. I know time right now seems a little bit weird, but this is definitely coming a lot quicker than any of us are ready for. So we will keep following those closely. But before we are done for today, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who makes this show possible over at mainenginecutoff.com

slash support. There are 435 of you who are supporting this show. This is an entirely listener-supported, listener-funded program, and it lets me get people like Laura and Daniel on, it lets me be completely independent and give my opinion without worrying about anything else in the world, and as we've seen in the times of pandemic, while a lot of media companies are having hard economic times, I'm still doing what I'm doing because you are supporting me directly, and that includes 38 executive producers who made this episode of Main Engine Cutoff possible, thanks to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadeem, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob,

Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support and thanks to everyone else over at managingcutoff.com support who made this possible uh so for now that's all i've got for you got any questions or thoughts email me anthony at managingcutoff.com or hit me up on twitter at we have miko uh and uh if you're if you do support the show at five dollars or more a month you get access to the Off-Nominal Discord, which is a great place to hang out. So check that out if you want to connect with me more online.

But otherwise, thanks for listening, and I will talk to you soon.