To establish a long-term presence on the moon, NASA on Wednesday granted contracts to three private space businesses for the development of autonomous rovers. These rovers would be used to transfer people and goods around the moon’s surface.
More lunar surface exploration might be possible with the rovers, especially as NASA looks to investigate the lunar South Pole, where ice is found in craters that are constantly shaded. Similar to how NASA’s rovers have been circling Mars for years, the rovers would continue to function even in the absence of astronauts on the moon.
The distinction with these moon rovers, though, is that the businesses will manage the vehicles in collaboration with NASA, allowing the businesses to explore business prospects as NASA works to support the establishment of a lunar economy.
The winning businesses include Lunar Outpost, located outside of Denver, Venturi Astrolab, a start-up situated outside of Los Angeles, and Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which recently made history by being the first commercial enterprise to launch a spacecraft to the lunar surface. The contracts together have a maximum potential value of $4.6 billion for the development of lunar terrain vehicles over a 15-year period, according to NASA.
on a briefing, Vanessa Wyche, the director of the Johnson Space Center near Houston, stated, “As astronauts explore the south pole region of the moon during Artemis missions, they’ll be able to go farther and conduct more science than ever before.” Imagine a cross between an unmanned mobile science platform and an Apollo-style lunar rover operated by our astronauts. The crew will be able to go much further from their landing spot thanks to this. Furthermore, that LTV will offer autonomous scientific and technology operations throughout unmanned operations.
The grants are another step toward NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a lunar outpost in addition to bringing humans back to the moon.
Tens of billions of dollars have been spent by the space agency on the Artemis program over the years, which includes the building of the Orion crew capsule and the Space Launch System rocket, which will transport humans to the moon’s vicinity. Additionally, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin have been awarded contracts by NASA to build two lunar landers that will transport men to and from the surface.
The space agency is investing in new technologies and spacesuits for mining, moon homes, and energy production. One such program from Blue Origin aims to convert regolith, or lunar dirt, into solar cells.
Apart from creating technology that would enable humans to live off the land while on the moon, NASA is searching for methods to increase the amount of lunar surface that they can investigate. Astronauts “will drive to explore and sample more of the lunar surface using the LTV than they could on foot,” NASA stated in a statement last year.
NASA’s LTV program manager, Steve Munday, stated in an interview from the previous year that “one to two kilometers is about as far as you want to walk in a suit on the lunar surface, as we found on Apollo.” Thus, something else is required. For the sake of science and transportation, that range must be expanded.
However, given the duration of astronauts’ surface stays would only be up to 30 days, the vehicle must function even in the absence of astronauts. “Cargo and scientific payloads between crewed landing sites, enabling additional science returns, resource prospecting, and lunar exploration,” the agency stated in a statement about the LTVs’ planned use between crewed missions.
Before the third human landing under Artemis, ASA promised to pay for one of the suppliers to send its rover to the moon. By the end of the decade, that landing is scheduled.
In order to deliver its vehicle, the Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover (FLEX), SpaceX has awarded a contract to Venturi Astrolab, which is collaborating with Axiom Space and Odyssey Space Research. According to founder and CEO Jaret Matthews, the company intends to make its maiden lunar landing in 2026.
“We’re at a point in history now where you can actually start to contemplate industrial-scale activity happening at the lunar south pole,” Matthews stated during the briefing, referring to SpaceX’s Starship rocket and several other new spacecraft being designed to land on the moon. Additionally, we’re working to create a platform to back it.
Following the landing of its Odysseus spacecraft earlier this year, Intuitive Machines—which is cooperating with AVL, Boeing, Michelin, and Northrop Grumman—sees this contract award as an additional step toward growing its work on the moon. CEO Steve Altemus stated, “It’s just an exciting next step to put the first critical piece of infrastructure on the surface” of the moon.
CEO Justin Cyrus stated that Lunar Outpost is building a fleet of rovers and plans to launch its first one to the moon later this year aboard an Intuitive Machines spacecraft. The company is collaborating with MDA Space, Goodyear, General Motors, and Lockheed Martin.
