Sally Richardson: Northrop Prepares for Upcoming Reviews of Human Landing System’s Transfer Element

Sally Richardson, program director for the Human Landing System at Northrop Grumman, said the company completed on Oct. 8 a system readiness review of the HLS' transfer element and is preparing for two more assessments in December and January, NASASpaceflight reported Friday. 

“So from that SRR, we now have a lot of our requirements baselined,” she told the publication in an interview. “The next major milestone will be the Integrated Lander PDR (Preliminary Design Review), which is going to be in December.  And then, after that, it will be followed in late-January by the Transfer Element PDR.” 

Richardson said the transfer element would launch first to provide the docking capability needed to facilitate the integration of the lunar lander in Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit and “a lot of the necessary services that are needed in flight but that are not needed on the Moon.” 

She also provided updates on the initial docking demonstration Northrop conducted in October with its transfer element. 

Northrop is part of a team led and formed in October 2019 by Blue Origin, which is working on the descent element of a lunar lander in support of NASA’s Artemis mission program. The National Team also includes Lockheed Martin and Draper.