WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — NASA on Saturday picked eight companies for a new $10 billion programme of commercial Moon landings and ordered a nuclear-powered rover for the lunar south pole, as it starts putting the first pieces of a permanent Moon Base in place before astronauts return.
“We are building the Moon Base mission by mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said as the awards were announced at the agency’s MAX POWER expo at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When astronauts go back, he said, they will find “the first elements of the Moon Base already waiting for them on the surface”.
The landers: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies will compete for orders to fly cargo and experiments to the Moon over the next 10 years, under a contract worth up to $10 billion in all. NASA also raised the ceiling of the first round of the programme from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion.
A rover from Mars spares: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build a six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover called PROMISE from spare parts and test models left over from the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. It will carry a drill that reaches about a metre underground, along with spectrometers, cameras and radiation sensors, to look for ice and other resources and help choose landing sites. Blue Origin will deliver it on its Mark 1 lander under a $94 million contract, with an option worth up to $140 million more. Launch is planned for late 2028, for an 18-month mission.
Getting there: six more orders worth about $1.3 billion went to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space for launches and transfers between Earth orbit and the Moon. They include drones that will survey the south pole before astronauts arrive and tests of navigation and communications in lunar orbit. SpaceX will separately launch communications satellites towards the Moon on Starship in 2028. For power on the surface, NASA will buy solar, battery and wireless power parts from Redwire, Blue Origin’s Honeybee Robotics and Yank Technologies.
“Most importantly, we’ve taken action, awarding new contracts and forging new partnerships to accelerate development,” said Carlos García-Galán, who runs NASA’s Moon Base programme.
Pakistan’s stake: the lunar south pole is also where Pakistan is headed. A 35-kilogram rover built by SUPARCO, the national space agency, is due to land there in 2028 on China’s Chang’e-8 mission, and Pakistani scientists will drive it from Earth. A Pakistani astronaut is also set to become the first foreigner on China’s space station.
