Take a Spin Around the Altair Lunar Lander

By Nancy Atkinson - February 4, 2009 at 3:30 PM UTC | Space Exploration
altair.jpg

[/caption] What will NASA's next generation of lunar landers be like? Well, right now the Altair lander is just a concept and the fine details of what the inside crew cabin will look like are still being figured out. But there are some general parameters the Altair program uses as a guideline, such as the lander needs to carry four astronauts to the lunar surface and serve as their home for up to a week. So that means Altair has to be much bigger than the Apollo lunar landers. (See below for a comparison of Altair and Apollo) There are Altair mock-ups already built at the Johnson Space Center in Houston where habitability teams are working inside, trying out different configurations. These teams are taking a look at how astronauts will live and work inside, so that Altair can be built in the best way possible for the mission. So what is their idea of how the inside will look? The folks at NASA have created a video depicting a 360 degree tour, just like the online home tours that realtors have for selling houses! So take a spin around inside!

Click here for Windows Media

, and

here for RealPlayer.

NASA has a few other great videos of what landing on the moon will be like with Altair:

And check out

this page on NASA's website

for an interactive Flash feature about Altair, and a concept video about landing, living and working on the moon.

How do Altair and the Apollo lander compare? One current concept for Altair is that it will stand more than 9.7 meters (32 feet) high and have a volume of 31.8 cubic meters (1,120 cu ft). The 1960's-70's Apollo lander stood 6.37 meters (20.9 ft) high and had an interior volume of 6.65 cubic meters (235 cubic feet).

Source:

NASA Blogs

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com