Lunar Race: Three Contenders Vying For NASA’s Next Moon Rover

Three companies are vying to provide NASA’s next lunar rover for crewed missions in the late 2020s, the space agency announced on Wednesday.

Intuitive Machines from Texas, Lunar Outpost from Colorado, and Venturi Astrolab from California have been selected to develop rover designs under contracts totaling up to $4.6 billion.

NASA plans to award one of these companies a “demonstration task order” to conduct a test run of their Lunar Terrain Vehicle on the Moon’s surface before the Artemis 5 mission, scheduled for the end of the decade.

“We are building up the capabilities needed to establish a longer-term exploration and presence of the Moon,” Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist told reporters. “I like to imagine the views and the vistas that the LTV will enable us to see from the surface of the Moon.”

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While these contracts were awarded to relatively new companies, they have partnered with established aerospace industry players. Intuitive Machines, for example, has received an initial $30 million to advance its Reusable Autonomous Crewed Exploration Rover prototype, in collaboration with AVL, Boeing, Michelin, and Northrop Grumman.

Astrolab’s contract could be worth up to $1.9 billion for its Flexible Logistics and Exploration rover, developed with Axiom Space and Odyssey Space Research.

“The FLEX rover is designed to carry two suited astronauts, support scientific exploration with a robotic arm, perform cargo logistics, and withstand the extreme temperatures at the lunar South Pole,” the company said in a statement.

Lunar Outpost, working with Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Goodyear, and MDA Space under the “Lunar Dawn” team, is developing the Lunar Dawn LTV.

“We’re taking cutting edge technology and automotive industry strengths to provide a true off-road vehicle capable of allowing us to live and work on the surface of the Moon,”. Lunar Outpost’s CEO, Justin Cyrus, mentioned that the company intends to deploy a mini uncrewed rover on the Moon later this year, as a component of Intuitive Machines’ upcoming lander mission.

NASA’s Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the Moon and establish a sustained presence there. The first crewed mission, Artemis 3, is scheduled for 2026. However, there are doubts about meeting this timeline. China also has plans to send a crew to the Moon by 2030, intensifying the new space race.

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