Called the “Lunar Terrain Vehicle,” the rover would play a key position in NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to create the infrastructure on and across the lunar floor that may permit for a long-term and sustainable human presence. To obtain that, the area company is working to develop sources of energy on the moon, in addition to the applied sciences that may permit astronauts to “live off the land” by mining lunar sources and even utilizing the lunar regolith, or lunar mud, to create constructing blocks that could possibly be used to create habitats.
Transportation can also be a key part. In an announcement final week, NASA stated it desires automobiles that astronauts “will drive to explore and sample more of the lunar surface using the LTV than they could on foot.”
“As we found on Apollo, one to two kilometers is about as far as you want to walk in a suit on the lunar surface,” Steve Munday, NASA’s LTV program supervisor, stated in an interview. “So you need something else. You need to extend that range, both for transportation and for science.”
But since astronauts can be on the floor just for as much as 30 days at a time, the car would must be helpful with out astronauts on board. Between crewed missions, the LTVs can be used to “transport cargo and scientific payloads between crewed landing sites, enabling additional science returns, resource prospecting and lunar exploration,” the company stated in an announcement.
For numerous missions, NASA can pay to make use of the rover for its functions. “But then, the other several months of the year, it’ll be up to the provider to commercialize it,” Munday stated. “So we’re not only leveraging commercial innovation but helping to drive this nascent lunar economy.”
Paying clients may embody firms performing science experiments on the moon or prospecting for sources.
NASA intends to make use of the lunar rover with astronauts starting with the third human spaceflight mission of its Artemis program — often called Artemis V — which is tentatively scheduled for 2029. But the rover can be used for uncrewed and potential business actions earlier than then.
NASA additionally plans to ship what it calls its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the moon as quickly as late subsequent yr. It would discover the moon’s south pole, NASA says, on a 100-day mission to seek for water on the moon and assist NASA resolve how greatest to entry it.
One of the businesses aiming to be first within the LTV competitors is a start-up known as Venturi Astrolab, based by Jaret Matthews, a former SpaceX and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer.
This yr, the corporate introduced that it had signed a contract with SpaceX to ship its land car, the Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover, or FLEX. Set to occur as early as mid-2026, the mission can be the primary business foray for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which NASA additionally intends to make use of to ferry its astronauts to and from the lunar floor for the primary two landings below Artemis.
The rover is designed to be, because the title implies, versatile. Its modular design will permit it to swap out payloads and serve totally different missions over time, Matthews stated. Venturi Astrolab stated it has signed agreements for business payloads however didn’t present particulars on them.
“It’s really about ultimately enabling a sustained human presence and all that entails,” Matthews stated in an interview. “Just as the International Space Station has a continuous flow of consumables heading to it, the same is likely to be true for the first several decades of operations on the moon. And that’s where we see ourselves — serving that market.”
Other bidders embody a few of the greatest names in aerospace teaming up with car producers, together with Lockheed Martin and General Motors, a partnership the businesses say would deliver extraordinary experience, given the cruel atmosphere of the moon. For the Artemis missions, NASA desires to discover the moon’s south pole, the place there may be water within the type of ice. But there are also harshly chilly nights that may final 14 days at a time.
“Today, what we demand is something that’s highly capable,” stated Kirk Shireman, the vice chairman for Lockheed Martin’s lunar exploration marketing campaign. “It will be autonomous. One of the big things is that it can survive the lunar night, which are long and very, very cold. And electronics don’t like very, very cold.”
The protection contractor Leidos is pairing up with NASCAR. Sierra Space is teaming up with Teledyne Brown Engineering and Nissan. Northrop Grumman, in the meantime, is in talks to crew up with Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based firm additionally constructing a lunar lander.
“Those kinds of untraditional partnerships [are] very encouraging for the kind of innovation and the range of designs we may get for this proposal,” Munday stated.
A contract award is anticipated by November.