NASA Cancels Lunar Resource Prospector, Promises Aggressive Commercial Strategy
The Resource Prospector prototype searches for a buried sample tube at the Johnson Space Center rock yard in August 2015. (Credit: NASA)
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
In a move that left the lunar science community stunned, NASA has canceled the Resource Prospector mission, which would have sent a rover to the moon to drill holes in search of ice and other volatiles that could be used to support human settlers and miners and turned into fuel to power spacecraft.
In place of the mission, which was set to launch in 2022, the space agency issued a draft request for proposal (RFP) on Friday for the new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Under CLPS, NASA would pay companies to carry instruments and experiments to the lunar surface aboard privately-built landers and rovers.
The space agency posted the following update on the Resource Prospector mission page on Friday.
NASA is developing an exploration strategy to meet the agency’s expanded lunar exploration goals. Consistent with this strategy, NASA is planning a series of progressive robotic missions to the lunar surface. In addition, NASA has released a request for information on approaches to evolve progressively larger landers leading to an eventual human lander capability.
As part of this expanded campaign, selected instruments from Resource Prospector will be landed and flown on the Moon. This exploration campaign reinforces Space Policy Directive 1, which calls for an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system, including returning humans to the Moon for long-term exploration.
The cancellation drew an immediate protest from the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), which provides the space agency with analysis of scientific, technical, commercial, and operational issues related to lunar exploration.
In an April 26 letter to newly installed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine written before the space agency posted the CLPS RFP, LEAG Chairman Samuel J. Lawrence and Emeritus Chairman Clive R. Neal expressed dismay over the cancellation and asked for the mission to be reinstated.
“This action is viewed with both incredulity and dismay by our community, especially as the President’s Space Policy Directive 1 directs NASA to go to the lunar surface,” they wrote. “[Resource Prospector] was the only polar lander-rover mission under development by NASA (in fact, by any nation, as all of the international missions to the lunar poles are static landers) and would have been ready for preliminary design review at the beginning of 2019.”
Documents on the CLPS RFP page indicate that NASA will sign “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) type” contracts with private companies providing transportation services to the moon. The approach will allow the space agency to pick and choose among different missions on which it could fly instruments and experiments.
“The Contractor shall select launch opportunities, determine the overall Mission Architecture, and provide the end-to-end service including operations associated with the Launch Vehicle, Launch Site, Spacecraft, Lander, Mission Design and Analysis, Ground Systems, and Payload Support,” the documents state.
Companies will be paid based on milestones they achieve. The space agency says it plans to issue at least one contract worth a minimum of $25,000.
“The maximum quantity ordered under all contracts awarded for Commercial Lunar Payload Services Acquisition shall not exceed $2.6 billion, cumulatively,” the documents state.
Credit: NASA
NASA has been working on lunar missions with three companies — Astrobotic Technology, Masten Space Systems and Moon Express. The purpose of the program “is to encourage the development of robotic lunar landers that can be integrated with U.S. commercial launch capabilities to deliver payloads to the lunar surface.
“Lunar CATALYST represents another step in the agency’s effort to spur growth in the commercial space sector,” the space agency said. “Commercial lunar transportation capabilities could support sample returns, geophysical network deployment, resource prospecting, and technology demonstrations. They also could address emerging private sector demand to conduct activities on the Moon.”
The Resource Prospector mission was being developed in cooperation with Taiwan, which would have providing the lunar lander.
Resource Prospector prototype. (Credit: NASA)
The rover would have use a neutron spectrometer and a near-infrared spectrometer to look for hydrogen-rich materials. The vehicle then would have used a drill to obtain samples to a depth of 1 meters (3.1 feet).
The soil samples would have been heated to 150 to 450 C ( F) in the rover’s oven to determine how much water and other volatiles exist in it. Volatiles would include water, carbon dioxide, helium, hydrogen, methane, nitrogen, and sulfur dioxide.
During 2015 and 2016, NASA engineers completed an integrated test of an engineering rover unit. The vehicle was driven remotely in conditions that simulated those it would encounter on the moon, including night driving to explore how the rover would navigate in low light levels.
Engineers also conducted thermal vacuum and vibration tests on the rover and its payload subsystems. A “detailed digital elevation models of potential landing zones” was also completed.
55 responses to “NASA Cancels Lunar Resource Prospector, Promises Aggressive Commercial Strategy”
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If the Resource Prospector is redesigned as about 4 vehicles with 4 landers the oven does not have to be on a rover. It could stay on its lander and the small rovers could bring their samples to it.
That is one of many possibilities that could be enabled by the new program.
Wrecking crew. They’ll wreck a flight ready to go, and then wait for a few years while private efforts are delayed into a future beyond the term of the administration. Well the first move was made, and of course it was a act of needless destruction. Now let’s see if the other part of their plan works out. And if it does not, no doubt they’ll blame everyone except themselves. Let’s hope these smaller enterprises can cross the finish line.
I was initially startled by this cancellation as well, it being the only NASA mission that addressed planetary science of a type explicitly of interest to commercial enterprises. The subsequent explanation of the cancellation makes it plain that what is going to replace Resource Prospector is, in essence, the thin edge of Dr. Doug Plata’s Lunar COTS idea. This will make it possible to do many and varied lander and rover missions for comparable total money. It will also greatly expand the number of players involved in lunar planetary science. Best of all, it could accelerate the schedule for seeing initial results and greatly multiply the total science “take” to be had.
And long term I have no problem with that. Wait, beyond no problem, it’s a policy I can fully get on the wagon for. However, given the budget is bloated with borrowed money as it is, I can’t see any real savings to come of it. Not only that, a mission like this can really help the private sector direct their plans. Now we have to wait for a new operating policy to take form and firm up, and given how long it’s taken Google Lunar X Prize to move forward, I don’t hold out too much faith for a lunar Space X to come shooting out of nowhere. And again, even if that happened, they’ll have to do so in ignorance because the data from this mission will be missing. Not to mention at the completion of this flight, think of the knowledge and experience base who could hire out to any private efforts that will take up the job. Likely they’ll have to go to the Chinese for the data, and you know what they’ll hold out for. You can go into the new policy executing this already developed, funded, and engineered flight and use it to guide what otherwise looks like a worthwhile policy. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Right wingers confuse wrecking things with constructing their policies. This is a perfect example of that kind of confusion.
this would be using skills developed by Lunar X-Prize, to get the data. As for the knowledge and experience base, not really none of this is actually Moon specific when it comes to technology, and there are other uses for it. The original program didn’t get far despite how long it lasted and the launcher was very uncertain. There isn’t a whole lot of call for lunar landers and such commercially, but there IS a lot of use for reasonably powerful, precise, launcher safe, compact spacecraft propulsion systems the lander part of the tech can be applied to IoS, active remediation and asteroid mining, The Moon is just a bench mark but they can greatly expand the technology laterally.
…Right wingers confuse wrecking things with constructing their policies. This is a perfect example of that kind of confusion…
Huh? This is the type of Lunar COTS style program that space geeks have been hoping for.
The original, wildly successful COTS program was born out of Constellation. That doesn’t make Griffin any less of a clusterfuck.
This one was such a clusterfuck that the new Admin (or the person running his twitter acct) was still praise-bragging about LRP as it was being cancelled. Hardly a sign of a well thought-out plan or proof that we’ve finally turned a corner.
I’m praising LP too. But adding it to the commercial mix will make it happen more quickly and more cheaply.
If there are multiple missions winging their way Moon-wards by as early as 2019, it’s hard to see how that imposes any delays on anyone’s plans relative to a single putative mission scheduled for 2022. Quite the opposite, I should think.
Nor will it put anyone at the mercy of nonexistent Chinese altruism anent useful ground-truth data.
There is also no need to count on “nowhere” to yield up potential lunar-focused enterprises. The late Google Lunar X-Prize produced Astrobotic and Moon Express. Blue Origin is also quite interested in lunar missions.
The Lunar Resource Prospector mission was not “already developed, funded and engineered.” That is an accurate description only of its instrumentation. But the new plan intends to use these instruments so nothing is being “wrecked.”
What this is a perfect example of is your Trump Derangement Syndrome leading you to shoot from the hip without aiming first. I recommend a toe inventory soonest.
And you better believe if that happens I’ll be here with a bib to eat my crow. So what’s the date should delays set in that you’ll pony up to do the same?
Why do you think that GOP is pushing to go to the moon, but is at same time destroying such attempt?
Wow.
While I am not a fan of the GOP, this looks like it is in the right direction. Basically, bridensteine (sp) is making use of the commercial work that has been for both NASA and Google and asking for alternative solutions. Next year, SpaceX is sending one of the Google prize team to the lunar south pole . They will be doing communications and other experiments. Now, if NASA can add 1, possibly more, Landers/rovers to that and have go next year, that sounds like a winner to me, and nothing political.
Catalyst already existed, and Bridenstein’s twitter account was praising LRP while NASA was announcing its cancellation. So he clearly wasn’t aware of what was going on.
…They’ll wreck a flight ready to go…
Not even close to ready.
Oh, but something *was* happening. Money was being sent to academic teams to run the RP program, and *that* has stopped. Immediately, those teams protested, not too surprisingly.
I’m beginning to suspect that this may end up as a dispute over who runs planetary exploration, the academics, or the long-term commercial groups seeking markets for what they can get investors for. Whether this transition to a “Lunar COTS” strategy for planetary exploration is being handled adroitly will be most interesting. If flubbed, we may see the academics back in charge again, with 12 year-long programs that churn out Phd.s, but don’t advance private investment.
Hard to tell how this will go.
Well academic control churns out PhD’s and 50+ years of FLIGHTS. Academics FLY. Academics have flown to every planet in the solar system, and discovered every minor planet known to humanity. Your vaunted capitalists have not flown one flight beyond LEO in 11 years of trying (and private flights for planetary science to LEO are very very few in number.), and have no operational observatories, no operational deep space networks. Other than Planetary Resources the sector you hold in such high esteem has only raised money for the purpose of keeping salaries and almost NO FLIGHTS. Even when they use the same funding source as the academics, they produce no flights. So far, when it comes to planetary sciences the private sector is a bunch of hot air. Their established record sucks. 19th century astronomers have them out performed. I’ll be happy to see this change and have them become flying and active organizations that actually conduct scientific enterprise. Yet again, a right winger proposes to wreck a working, operational, flying organization in exchange for a set of empty promises.
*Well academic control churns out PhD’s and 50+ years of FLIGHTS.”
Yes, Andrew. As I’ve said, here and elsewhere, people really really have noticed that.
You announce that like it is an unalloyed good. The problem remains that out among the non-progressive portion of society, that elected the current administration, this is not at all deemed to be an unalloyed good thing, because they no longer trust even the best science team employed *in*academia* by progressive politicians. With the usual cut sent off to academic administrators, of course. In 1968, they still assumed the science was well-done. After 50 years of being pissed on by the majority of the academic community, they no longer assume that, even for planetary science.
That’s the problem!
They see deep and corrupt self-interest at work in an academic community 95% of which snubs them when good, and sneers openly if feeling their oats. They assume they will get nothing they want from it.
So, something else is being tried, where far less will be poured through academic hierarchies.
It may work.
It may not.
“Yet again, a right winger proposes to wreck a working, operational, flying organization in exchange for a set of empty promises.”
Working? For who? That is the question, Andrew, and too few who voted for the current administration can be convinced by people like me that this should be tried in parallel with the old hierarchy’s methods. So we get an old-style program being completely reworked to use other methods, under someone else’s control.
I’ve said this again and again. The current uproar is *not* about one man in the WH. It is about who rightfully controls the Republic, and the resources our society disposes. This is a small part of that struggle.
“Working? For who?” They FLY Tom. After over a decade of trying and failing you propose the private sector as superior by nature and are blind to their decade of failure until it’s put in your face. We in the academic space arena understand that there will be a day when private enterprise constitutes a majority, eventually even an overwhelming majority of space enterprise. Most of us would even welcome that day when it comes. But don’t come to us and call us corrupt and incompetent when we’re the only game flying, and your side is still under performing even from the metrics of the 1800’s. If you want to be superior, BE SUPERIOR.
And the longer you can hold off more efficient and cost effective work, the longer you can keep getting overpaid for occasionally getting useful results. No need to invent matches when good ol flint-n-steel produces results.
You know, our paychecks are public record. They’re really quite low. If you feel you’re not getting your money’s worth, and you find yourself in Tucson Az, let me know and I’ll show you how lazy and ineffective I am. The trick will be you can’t sleep until I sleep. If you have the stamina to start work at 8am head into the lab to assemble your work load for the trip to Kitt Peak, then head up and start a full day’s tending to one of 3 telescopes, then preparing the software for the nights observations, then observing, and after sunrise stowing the machines and sending out the data, and getting to bed the next day just before it turns into a 24 hour day. You’re welcome to see the process. At the end of a first days observations I’ll look you in the face and challenge you to call me a lazy public worker again. My bet is you’d never take the job, and you’d never accept the pay level either. The average salary for a school teacher in Az is ~ 40k a year. Me and my colleagues are not paid much more. We take huge pay cuts to work in a field we love.
You win. Compared to your job, concrete construction in Florida is a gravy job. Funny you should mention school teachers. Last I checked, education budget k-12 was over $12,000.00 per year per student in this country. It doesn’t take much math to realize that the vast majority of that doesn’t make it to the classroom. Results for budget are poor. I don’t know what useful results you get in your field so I can’t judge. Top line probably doesn’t match your bottom line costs or your salary any better.
Oh fascinating conjecture there on who could be doing a better job than the American astronomical community at collecting, processing, and publishing scientific results? In your learned and experienced opinion who do you think might show us how it’s done? Here’s some examples to go off. Be sure to explore these in depth and understand their function and what the data mean when you show us the better way.
https://www.minorplanetcent…
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/ho…
Looking forward to your alternative example that’s no doubt privately operated and open for public use and of course is as in depth. I look forward to your example of how ineffective your public tax dollars and debt notes are spent as compared to the private sector.
Redneck I take a hit in my pay and overwork because I’m interested in real hardware, and interactions with scientific investigation. Today I’ll be ordering some #4-40 machine head screws and writing some FPGA code for a camera I’m making for myself. When you come back with your reply it had better be good. Talk is cheap, as you know blueprints don’t make a wall. You pour concrete, I design, build and operate scientific instruments. I’m sure you can understand my snobbery. I look forward to your suggestions to my community doing a better job.
Produce something useful enough that people are willing to pay for it. We get paid by the square foot, not the sweat gallon.
If you want to live in a society that mines asteroids you need to live in a society that knows what they are and where they are. If we lived in a libertarian utopia along your lines, we’d know of maybe 20 asteroids that could be recovered. I see you have no understanding of what it takes to predict the position of an asteroid decades into the future. Your ignorance shows, I’m glad you feel confident enough to show it in public. When humanity goes out to economically exploit the solar system it will be using my data. If you understood how our knowledge of the objects in the solar system is acquired, and maintained you’d understand how long lived our product is and that it will be used for centuries into the future. Far longer than your walls and roads, and just as useful. Just because you don’t know how to make use of the resources I pointed out does not mean they are not useful. Just that you are very self centered and only give value to products that directly serve you to a first order. You’re like a beer drinker who says “I don’t give a &^ck about aluminum production, or how well the hops crop in Oregon is doing.”.
In a libertarian utopia, we could afford to buy data and hire astronomers without all the overhead losses, regulatory capture, and bureaucratic friction faced now. Though that’s not happening, a turn towards rational behavior would be welcomed.
You seriously still place utopia and rational next to each other as an adult out of his 20’s? Okay. When your utopia is reached and we live in it. I’ll hunt you down and say I’m sorry I was wrong. Until then, I have a job I’d like to do. Consider this. You work in an industry that’s over 2000 years old. It’s well established and integrated into society. Mine was founded in the 1880’s. Was considered the ‘vermin’ of the sky until the 1980’s when asteroids were first understood as a defense and security problem, and not until 1994 was it illustrated for us all to see. My trade is young and inexperienced compared to yours.
Astronomy is older than concrete. You might try learning a bit of history if it’s not beyond your capabilities, being an academic and all.
Well what can I say, but you’re wrong again. Astronomy as we know it today with the recording of Right Ascensions and Declinations and accurate times is quite modern. Perhaps you are confusing astrology with astronomy. Maybe you still do. It had it’s first glimpses around the time Kepler. As for asteroids, the first one known Ceres was discovered in the early 1800’s and it took a while to understand what it was. …. What was that about history? Oh, that I need to read more redneck history?
Redefining the discussion by selecting your start points. Have fun with that.
Andrew, I have been following your exchange with redneck with interest. IMO, the World contains many people who are dedicated to their field of endeavour. Like in many things, the Pareto Principle seems to apply, 80% of the effort is supplied by 20% of the people. I’m guessing that you are one of the 20%. Regards, Paul.
Thanks Paul that’s very nice of you to say. But I’m surrounded by many people who do it better than me.
My pleasure, Andrew. I forgot to add in my comment, getting back on-topic, that I’m very upset with NASA’s decision. Not because they cancelled the public led program in favour of a private led program. But, because they have put nothing concrete in place to guarantee that a private led program would actually be realised. Basically, IMO, they have just cancelled the program. Very sad. All the best, Paul.
We should give the new admin a chance to synthesize something. But likely it will take 3 years to fly at least. Using SX and the other private startups as an example, likely much longer. Killing this program really has the effect of turning off the Moon for a long time even if Trump is re-elected. It’s just going to take a long time to organically grow a private lunar space sector. The better approach is to allow private companies to ride along as payloads on a government lander/rover in much the same fashion we take European and Japanese instruments along for rides on our probes. That would transfer the technology and techniques to the private sector rather than having them flail and fail AFTER they start flying. And it will take a long time for them to be ready to fly.
Thanks again for your reply, Andrew. In retrospect, I shouldn’t be so critical of the NASA decision. Given some of my comments made in the past with regard to the environment that exists within the permanent shadowed craters of the Lunar Poles, it is understandable why NASA has, for the moment, walked away from this type of program. It is seriously, seriously cold, very near absolute zero, and anything mechanical, like our current rover technologies, is not going to operate for very long. I guess that they are just avoiding a future embarrassing episode of appearing before a commission to explain why, after all the money had been spent, the rover completely failed to achieve any of it’s mission’s goals. Regards, Paul.
Its interesting because both the Minor Planet Center, along with JPL, started out without federal funding.
Sure, but in order to survive long term and provide public access to data they had to go public. Actually they go both ways, and that’s a fine thing.
As I’ve said before, I don’t equate public funds with the public good. The question is does a society need something, and can a market support that something in the wilds of the market? If the society deems it worthwhile to pursue a capability that can’t survive in the wilds of the marketplace, then you do it in the public sphere. If there is a mix of funding models, or if the service can eventually survive in the wilds of the marketplace, than that’s fine too. I’m not against the private sector. But it has limitations. I’m not against the public sector, but it has limitations.
Nope.
. Both were started out of university programs that had federal funding.
This approach is very typical in the scientific academian world.
Go look at wiki.
No, much of that money makes it into concrete construction workers pockets, bus drivers, instruments, sports, etc.
Btw, if you look at America’s elementary school, below 8th grade, we are top notch. Not all states, but our average.
It is highschool that we have turned disaster. But that is easy to figure out why. We used to teach trades such as drafting, construction, home economics, etc in HS, and those that were not capable of college ( which are many ), would go that route. Now we try to push everybody into college, which is just plain stupid.
More of it than should goes to concrete construction. The ones I have worked on were so poorly thought out in design as to cost multiples of what they should have. I avoid school projects like the plague after experiencing a few. I have seen structure costs balloon to 10x proper cost. The contractors that specialize in them are not (mostly) the ones you want to associate with.
I’m good with zero concrete in schools if it there’s a chance it would start a trend of responsible operations. I can find other work. The students and taxpayers are stuck.
Which explains why so few students go into STEM. Add in that half of those earning Ph.D.s in astronomy will never find an academic job and its no wonder they choose to major in other fields.
U do realize that it is academia that actually gets real work done in places like NASA, while it is commercial and political interest that destroy things.
SLS / Orion is a great example of business/GOP destroying and wasting money.
And musk would tell you that SpaceX is a great example of business combined with academia making things right.
And yes, musk considers himself more academian than political.
You’re still missing it Andrew.
I *like* most of what academics do in spaceflight.
I was commenting on why control of funding is being taken away.
The problem is *not*, to my eyes, the performance of academics *in*spaceflight*.
The problem is association with *others* in academia who *are* corrupt/incompetent,*just*by*being*in*academia*with*them*. Whether its the MLA, or the Antifa fools, or the bilious twaddle about cultural appropriation and a hundred other progressives’ causes that you may pay no attention to. You are paying part of the price for that stupidity.
The problem that leaves you open is pure guilt by association, and yes, …it sucks, …but it’s what academia has been moving toward for 50 years. You are bound to them in the eyes of far too many Trump voters as being so close and mutually supporting that they are glad to see you fall together. However good *I* may say the work done is, it isn’t enough in their eyes, because they can see on TV too many nights the riots and the trashing of non-progressive lectures and all the rest of progressive culture that dominates academia. Trust is long since gone.
That the transition in RP is as gentle as it is, with instruments moved to other vehicles, is *lucky* compared to what some would wish on academia, …any and all parts of it. That is where we find ourselves. *I* consider it a very dangerous place for society as a whole.
Tom I don’t really care what you associate me with. I guess what I’m railing against with you is that you believe in your utopian world view like a teenager. Why do I argue with you? To show others that the real world is not a utopia and never will be and to stop wasting time waiting for things to be perfect before moving forward. For the first time we have some real doors open to begin space colonization and development, and people like you are just pushing their politics instead of pushing for systems development by whatever means to move this society into a new frontier. It’s not a matter of either public, or private, but in our lifetimes it will be both. Let future generations figure out the balance for themselves.
No offense I don’t need your attribution for my kraftwork. My mark on history is my observation data set, operational instruments, a derelict lander on Mars, an asteroid that bears my name, 3 comets I’ve discovered, and my pilots license. You can think of me as a red communist of the Warsaw Pact, and I would not give a flying … You know what. What the frontier needs are people, preferably American making systems and thinking up what to do in space and how to move out. When politico’s like you try to get in the way of a functional wing of that, I’m going to lash out in public.
Wow.
I guess we are all entitled to our own opinions, even when obviously uninformed.
The problem is the depth of of experience those opinions are based in. *I* certainly have not been able to budge them, given their experiences.
Give the private capitalists the billions of dollars that academics have received over the last 50 years and they will be flying too. The big problem with the Lunar X Prize was that no one had the money to buy the launches needed.
Tom, no payloads ready to fly were made. I thought the whole idea of the private sector was that you could raise your own money. The reason I compared New Space’s underperformance against 19th cen Astronomy was that 19th cen Astronomy was largely private. Overwhelmingly private in fact.
It depends entirely on the revenue model used, but the biggest problem was that the Google X Prize kept the most attractive revenue sources, video rights and advertising, for itself with only a sharing arrangement for the teams. This was a major failure in its design, one that benefited the X-Prize foundation but doomed the teams to finding a billionaire donor to move forward.
In terms of 19th Century astronomy, it was funded privately because until the Second World War governments had no interest in astronomy for any use other than navigation. That was why the Naval Observatory was created. The Smithsonian followed, but remember that Smithsonian Institute itself was created from a major gift to the government and private donations helped establish the SAO. Indeed, the SAO stills accepts private donations.
But government science funding after the war crowded out a lot of the private funding. Private donors tend to focus on areas the government is not involved in. Also the high post war income tax restricted wealth accumulation which was a factor in funding pre-war Astronomy. Now that wealth accumulation has reached the pre-war levels you are again seeing private individuals funding science projects that the government isn’t interested in.
https://www.chartbookofecon…
Whoa whoa, whoa.
Put the brakes on.
I think you are making this too much of academia Vs commercial, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the Landers have NOT been done by academia, but by old space. And yes, old space is commercial.
The problem is that old space continues to push cost+ funding and making things slow and expensive.
If bridensteine can add more flights at lower costs and faster pace, what is wrong with that?
Oh, I suspect that those ppl simply reacted quickly and were concerned to miss out.
However, if COTS speeds up lunar surface access and lowers the costs so that we get more missions, I will guess that academia will be estatic about it.
no where or bust…its just the same old Trump thing…talk talk talk talk
Why do you say that?
This is exactly what is needed to propel putting multiple robotics on the moon.
Look, Google lunar prize was a bust. However a lot of work was done. If we can now take advantage of that work and send multiple missions to the moon by 2022, then this is great.
It could work.
It could work better if NASA made some unknowns know (for example, characterize the resources) and bought down some of the risk by launching Lunar Prospector, but still, turning to a COTS-like structure for an initial modern lunar surface mission(s) may ultimately be helpful in its own right.
Still, this is exactly the type of mission that could have jump started things, so I’m a bit disappointed. But the flight wasn’t imminent anyway, so I’m not all “twisted in knots” over this news either. Just seems like they’re kind of skipping a step