The distinction with these moon rovers, nonetheless, is that the automobiles might be operated by the businesses in partnership with NASA, and the businesses would have the ability to pursue industrial alternatives with them as NASA seeks to assist construct a lunar economic system.
The successful corporations are Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which not too long ago turned the primary industrial enterprise to ship a spacecraft to the lunar floor; Venturi Astrolab, a start-up based mostly outdoors of Los Angeles; and Lunar Outpost, based mostly outdoors of Denver. Combined, the contracts have a most potential worth of $4.6 billion over 15 years for the event of what NASA calls lunar terrain automobiles.
“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, thanks to the lunar terrain vehicle,” Vanessa Wyche, the director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, stated throughout a briefing. “Think of a hybrid of the Apollo-style lunar rover that was driven by our astronauts and an uncrewed mobile science platform. This will give the crew the capability to travel a distance much farther from their landing site. In addition, during uncrewed operations, that LTV will provide autonomous operations for science and technology.”
The awards symbolize one other down fee by NASA on its Artemis program, which the company hopes is not going to solely return astronauts to the lunar floor however will construct a base there.
Over the years, the house company has invested tens of billions of {dollars} within the Artemis program, together with improvement of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion crew capsule, that are to hold the astronauts to the neighborhood of the moon. NASA has additionally awarded contracts for a pair of lunar landers — being constructed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin — to ferry astronauts to and from the floor. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The house company is investing in new spacesuits and new applied sciences, reminiscent of mining, moon habitats and power technology, together with a program from Blue Origin to rework the lunar grime, or regolith, into photo voltaic cells.
In addition to growing expertise that might enable astronauts to “live off the land” whereas on the moon, NASA is on the lookout for methods to develop how a lot of the lunar floor they will discover. In an announcement final yr, NASA stated it needs 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 final yr. “So you need something else. You need to extend that range, both for transportation and for science.”
But since astronauts could be on the floor just for as much as 30 days at a time, the automobile must be helpful with out astronauts on board. Between crewed missions, the LTVs would “transport cargo and scientific payloads between crewed landing sites, enabling additional science returns, resource prospecting and lunar exploration,” the company stated in an announcement.
NASA stated it might pay for one of many suppliers to land its rover on the moon earlier than the third human touchdown beneath Artemis. That touchdown is deliberate for the tip of the last decade.
Venturi Astrolab, which is partnering with Axiom Space and Odyssey Space Research, introduced final yr that it had signed a contract with SpaceX to ship its automobile, the Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover (FLEX). It hopes to first land on the moon in 2026, stated chief government and founder Jaret Matthews.
With SpaceX’s Starship rocket and a lot of new spacecraft being constructed to land on the moon, “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 in the course of the briefing. “And we’re trying to build a platform to support it.”
For Intuitive Machines, which is partnering with AVL, Boeing, Michelin and Northrop Grumman, the contract award is one other step in increasing its work on the moon after the touchdown of its Odysseus spacecraft earlier this yr. “It’s just an exciting next step to put the first critical piece of infrastructure on the surface” of the moon, CEO Steve Altemus stated.
Lunar Outpost is growing a fleet of rovers, CEO Justin Cyrus stated, and intends to ship its first to the lunar floor on an Intuitive Machines spacecraft later this yr. The firm is teaming with Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Goodyear and MDA Space.