Blue Origin De-orbit Descent and Landing Tipping Point: Program Final Report

The purpose of this document is to provide a final report on the Deorbit, Descent, and Landing (DDL)
Tipping Point program, a public-private partnership between Blue Origin and NASA that is partially funded
by NASA contract 80LARC19C0005. In this report we summarize the results of the entire contract,
including recommendations and conclusions based on the experience and results obtained. Only the
portions funded by the government with associated unlimited rights are documented in detail in this
report. For the work funded by Blue Origin, summaries with unlimited rights are provided for context and
completeness. The Blue Origin funded work exceeded 25% of the originally proposed total program cost
and included a mixture of hardware procurement and critical technology maturation.
The scope of this document is a discussion of all the major tasks performed under the contract including
the sensor flight demonstrations on New Shepard, the hardware in the loop lunar landing navigator
demonstration, and the ground testing of the Flash LiDAR hazard sensor. The contributions from the
multiple NASA teams – Johnson Space Center, Langley Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center,
and Jet Propulsion Laboratory – are described along with the contributions from Blue Origin. This
document is the Final Report for statement of work item 4.1.2.10 as Deliverable 5.8.