NASA Announces Partnership Opportunities for U.S. Commercial Lunar Lander Capabilities
Artist’s conception of a Bigelow lunar habitat. (Credit: Bigelow Aerospace)
WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — Building on the progress of NASA’s partnerships with the U.S. commercial space industry to develop new spacecraft and rockets capable of delivering cargo, and soon, astronauts to low Earth orbit, the agency is now looking for opportunities to spur commercial cargo transportation capabilities to the surface of the moon.
NASA has released an announcement seeking proposals to partner in the development of reliable and cost-effective commercial robotic lunar lander capabilities that will enable the delivery of payloads to the lunar surface. Such capabilities could support commercial activities on the moon while enabling new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and the larger scientific and academic communities.
NASA’s new Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (Lunar CATALYST) initiative calls for proposals from the U.S. private sector that would lead to one or more no-funds exchanged Space Act Agreements (SAA). NASA’s contribution to a partnership would be on an unfunded basis and could include the technical expertise of NASA staff, access to NASA center test facilities, equipment loans, or software for lander development and testing.
“As NASA pursues an ambitious plan for humans to explore an asteroid and Mars, U.S. industry will create opportunities for NASA to advance new technologies on the moon,” said Greg Williams, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. “Our strategic investments in the innovations of our commercial partners have brought about successful commercial resupply of the International Space Station, to be followed in the coming years by commercial crew. Lunar CATALYST will help us advance our goals to reach farther destinations.”
The moon has scientific value and the potential to yield resources, such as water and oxygen, in relatively close proximity to Earth to help sustain deep space exploration. Commercial lunar transportation capabilities could support science and exploration objectives, such as sample returns, geophysical network deployment, resource prospecting, and technology demonstrations. These services would require the ability to land small (66 to 220 pound, or 30 to 100 kilogram) and medium (551 to 1,102 pound, or 250 to 500 kg) class payloads at various lunar sites.
“In recent years, lunar orbiting missions, such as NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, have revealed evidence of water and other volatiles, but to understand the extent and accessibility of these resources, we need to reach the surface and explore up close,” said Jason Crusan, director of Advanced Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Commercial lunar landing capabilities could help prospect for and utilize these resources.”
Lunar CATALYST supports the internationally shared space exploration goals of the Global Exploration Roadmap (GER) NASA and 11 other space agencies around the world released in August. The GER acknowledges the value of public-private partnerships and commercial services to enable sustainable exploration of asteroids, the moon and Mars.
Commercial lunar cargo transportation systems developed through Lunar CATALYST could build on lessons learned throughout NASA’s 50 years of spaceflight. New propulsion and autonomous landing technologies currently are being tested through NASA’s Morpheus and Mighty Eagle projects.
NASA will host a pre-proposal teleconference on Monday, Jan. 27 during which proposers will have an opportunity to ask questions about the announcement. Proposals from industry are due by March 17. The announcement of selections is targeted for April with SAAs targeted to be in place by May.
The Advanced Exploration Systems Division in NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Advanced Exploration Systems pioneers new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities and validating operational concepts for future human missions beyond Earth orbit.
As NASA works with U.S. industry to develop the next generation of U.S. spaceflight services, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system, including to a near-Earth asteroid and Mars.
For more information about the announcement and teleconference, visit:
12 responses to “NASA Announces Partnership Opportunities for U.S. Commercial Lunar Lander Capabilities”
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Perhaps Luna Dragon, with Morpheous obstacle avoidance for landing on unprepared sites. A prequel to red dragon? With additional fuel inside to replenish standard fuel tanks they may be able to do sample return from the moon? That would be cool.
Hopefully, whoever wins the medium landers, have a plan in place that is scalable so that they can land in magnitudes more.
As an example, Masten have plans to convert a Centaur upper stage with 4 of their rockets for vertical propulsion, to a sort of lunar tug and hab/supplies lander; it’s called Xeus. Not sure if it’s LEO-lunar-LEO or just L1-lunar-L1. Anyhow, 14 tonnes soft land expendable or 5 tonnes reusable. I bet with 6 months worth of Orion funding they could get it working.
thanx. I had not seen that one. Personally, I would love to see one that can land a BA-330 out there, but …..
This couldn’t possibly be as a result of China’s recent success could it?
I really am excited by this positive announcement. Although Bigelow is not directly mentioned in the report but in the picture above are we to assume a manned space habitat will be included in this Moon project?
Funding is key in order to progress this further, am I to believe Congress are not entirely convinced by the current “Commercial” space initiative? Hopefully in time this will be overcome and will not be just a “footprints and flags” exercise.
I’m sure I will be shot down for saying this but…”Viva la commercial space revolution!”
There is not supposed to be any funding involved it seems. Basically American companies that are contracted get to use NASA’s expertise, knowledge and perhaps a test facility!
Kind of like how Moon Express got to use NASA’s Morpheus lander testbed to try their software on!
Dennis, I agree no funding at present but… once certain technologies are proven to be practical I suspect against the background of China’s continued lunar progress funding will be found whether that be official or unofficial.
Sorry, I’m just an optimist.
The SLS and Orion are eating so much of NASA’s budget that there’s no money left over to fund trivial things like payloads. This is likely a way for NASA to get other companies to do the R&D necessary to build things that could be flown on the SLS (if it ever flies).
I think a better approach would be for NASA to say, “We’re willing to pay X dollars per person to send Y people to the moon for Z days at a time” and let companies like Bigelow, Boeing and SpaceX determine the best ways to meet the need. In short, NASA needs to buy tickets to the moon or where ever else the same way they buy airline tickets. Instead of NASA operating its own airline or being heavily involved in the design and construction of airliners, they buy tickets from existing airlines. They should do the same thing for space.
We’re not there yet. Neither NASA nor the NewSpace Industry.
“This couldn’t possibly be as a result of China’s recent success could it?”
No. The idea of Bigelow habitats on the Moon (or as part of a beyond-LEO ship) has been around for several years now….
I think it’s just for unmanned scientific and prospecting missions. Unless congress or the next president redirects NASA towards a lunar base, anything directly involving manned missions (such as logistics support) would be much further down the line.
It seems NASA envisions buying a commercial rocket and a commercial lunar lander to put their scientific instruments on, allowing them to buy a lunar surface scientific mission for a fraction of what it would cost now. Simultaneously, the capability would be there for commercial missions, maybe helping open a little lunar economy that NASA could piggyback on and/or vice versa.
Right now, with SLS and it’s planned asteroid work, the focus on Mars and the James Webb, and the outer planets and moons like Europa calling, there’s no money left for a group of lunar lander missions such as are needed to determine the on the ground truth of the lunar polar water situation — exactly where is it and in what form? In what quantities? What is the environment? Is it extractable? At what cost? The moon’s right there, hanging over our heads every night. We’ve been there since the middle of the last century. There’s got to be a way to get there without spending all this money such as they’ve been doing — and there is. Nasa’s on board. Come on, congress — join us in the 21st century!
It’s notable this program only for small cargo landers. It’s inspired by Bigelows push to private manned Moon bases, yet manned landers are excluded. Why? Perhaps because NASA is presenting the idea we can’t return to the Moon because a manned lander would cost $10 billion.
Actually Dave Masten of Masten Space Systems estimates we can develop a Centaur-derived manned lander for only $50 million:
A (mostly) commercial architecture for solar system exploration – YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
In such a case we could return to the Moon by the first launch of the SLS in 2017.
Bob Clark