NASA plans to rent some cool wheels to orbit the moon.
Space agency officials announced Wednesday that they have hired three companies to develop preliminary designs for vehicles that will take NASA astronauts to the moon's south pole region in the coming years. After the astronauts return to Earth, these vehicles will be able to drive themselves as robotic rovers, similar to NASA's Mars rovers.
Self-driving capabilities will also allow the vehicle to take part in the next astronaut mission in another location.
“There's no path forward for where it's going,” Jacob Breacher, NASA's chief exploration scientist, said at a press conference Wednesday. “That mobility will fundamentally change the way we view the Moon.”
Those companies include Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which successfully landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon in February. Lunar outpost in Golden, Colorado. Only one of his three companies actually builds his NASA vehicle and sends it to the moon.
NASA was seeking proposals for something called the Lunar Topographic Vehicle (LTV), which can travel at speeds of 9.3 miles per hour, travel dozens of miles on a single charge, and be driven by astronauts for eight hours.
The agency plans to work with the three companies for a year to further develop the design. NASA will then select one of them for the demonstration stage.
LTV is not expected to be ready in time for the astronauts on Artemis III, the first landing on NASA's Moon return mission, currently scheduled for 2026.
Lara Carney, manager of extravehicular activities and human surface mobility programs at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said the LTV will be launched on the moon in advance of Artemis V, the third astronaut landing scheduled for 2030. The plan is to land at .
“If they can get there faster, we'll get there faster,” Carney said.
The LTV contract is worth up to $4.6 billion over the next 15 years and includes five years of development followed by 10 years of lunar operations, most of which will go to the winner of the competition. But Carney said the contract also allows NASA to fund the development of additional rovers later on, or for other companies to compete in the future.
The deal follows NASA's recent strategy of purchasing services rather than hardware.
In the past, NASA relied on aerospace companies to build the vehicles, then own and operate them. Among them are the Saturn V rocket, the space shuttle, and the lunar rover (commonly known as the lunar buggy) that astronauts drove on the moon during his three Apollo missions, the last of which was in 1971 and 1972. ) is included.
This new approach proved successful and low-cost for transporting cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA currently pays companies, particularly Elon Musk's SpaceX, a fixed fee for these services, similar to a plane ticket or a FedEx package.
For the company chosen to build the LTV, the vehicle remains its property, and the company can rent it to other customers when NASA doesn't need it.
“Selling that spacecraft capacity is commercially viable for us as a commercial venture, and it is a commercial venture for us, as well as for our international partners and around the world,” said Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines. The same goes for other commercial companies and space agencies.”
This competition has led to alliances between small startups and larger, more established aerospace and automotive companies. The Intuitive Machines team includes Boeing, Northrop, Grumman, and tire manufacturer Michelin. Lunar Outpost added to its team Lockheed Martin, Goodyear, and General Motors, which were involved in the design of the Apollo moon buggy.
Astrolab is working with Axiom Space in Houston to send commercial astronauts to the space station and build commercial modules to the International Space Station. Astrolab announced last year that it had signed a deal to send one of its probes to the moon on a SpaceX Starship rocket as early as 2026. The mission is independent of whether it is selected by NASA, a company spokeswoman said.
Lunar Outpost is competing with Intuitive Machines for the contract, but plans to work separately with Intuitive Machines to send a small robotic rover to the moon on its Lunar Lander.