Commercial Lunar Payload Services

NASA engineers are making progress on the agency’s Moon rover, which could begin its lunar adventure on the rocky satellite sometime in the mid 2020s.The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (or VIPER) is a four-wheeled robot whose mission is to find and study water ice on the Moon’s South Pole. The 1,000-pound rover is being assembled at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.According to a NASA release, the rover’s lower chassis plate and parts of its frame have now been installed; it is literally the…

Texas-based Firefly has been tasked with placing a lunar lander on the far side of the Moon, where it will drop off a pair of communications experiments.NASA selected Firefly Aerospace to deliver multiple lunar payloads in 2026 under a $112 million contract, Firefly announced on Wednesday. The company will use its Blue Ghost spacecraft to place a European communications satellite in lunar orbit before delivering the two NASA payloads on the far side of the Moon as part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload…

An illustration of the data centers Lonestar wants to place on the Moon.Illustration: Jason Riley, Artificial Lens for LonestarUnprecedented access to space is leading to all sorts of cool new ideas, including the prospect of storing data on the lunar surface. Cloud computing startup Lonestar Data Holdings announced the results of its latest funding round, taking it one step closer to this very goal. The Florida-based company raised $5 million in seed funding to establish lunar data centers, Lonestar announced in a press…

An artist’s depiction of the Hakuto-R lander on the Moon.Illustration: ispaceThe Hakuto-R spacecraft won’t land on the Moon until April, but the private mission is already in the record books. Tokyo-based company ispace developed the lunar spacecraft and lander with the aim of becoming the first private mission to successfully land on the Moon. During its long journey to the Moon, Hakuto-R got as far as 855,000 miles (1.376 million kilometers) away from Earth on January 20. That distance made the Japanese lunar spacecraft…

The TitanAir concept for exploring Saturn’s moon Titan. Illustration: Quinn MorleyThe future of space exploration requires big ideas, and NASA has no objection to considering some of the biggest ideas out there. The space agency’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program exists for this very purpose, and it has chosen the next crop of concepts worthy of an initial study.The latest round of NIAC grants were awarded to 14 research teams, each receiving $175,000 to further develop their concepts,NASA announced yesterday.…

An illustration of the human lunar lander on the surface of the Moon.Illustration: Blue OriginBlue Origin is once again making a pitch to build a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. The space company is partnering with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Astrobotic Technology, Honeybee Robotics, and Draper in hopes of building a second lander, Blue Origin announced on Tuesday.Earlier this year, NASA formally announced its intention to procurea second lunar lander for its Artemis program, so it comes as little surprise to learn…

An engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory observes the COLDArm being tested in a bed of simulated lunar soil.Image: NASA/JPL-CaltechIt can get cold on the Moon—so cold in fact that these temperatures are likely to impede the abilities of some current NASA engineering. As a result, the space agency is testing out a new mechanical arm that is designed to withstand the frosty temperatures on the Moon ahead of the ongoing Artemis missions.The 6.5-foot-long (2-meter-long) robot arm is being developed and tested at NASA’s…

An illustration of SpaceX’s Starship human lander design.Illustration: SpaceXNASA recently added a new Moon landing to its Artemis plans and it needs a specialized human landing system to carry it out. To virtually no one’s surprise, NASA chose SpaceX to develop this second lunar lander. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract modification known as Option B, which calls for tweaks to the company’s initial Starship lunar lander, the space agency announced this week. The Option B contract is worth around $1.15 billion.“With…

Tokyo-based company ispace is gearing up to make history with the kickoff of its lunar program, attempting to land the first commercial lunar lander this month and deliver government and privately-owned payloads to the surface of the Moon. Here’s what you need to know about the mission.What is the HAKUTO-R M1 lander?The Mission 1 lander (M1) is the inaugural mission to ispace’s lunar exploration program, Hakuto-R. The lunar lander is designed to provide a low-cost delivery service to the Moon, deploying payloads on the…

Lunar Flashlight is set for launch in November, and can be seen here in Georgia Tech’s clean room. Image: NASA/JPL-CaltechThe Lunar Flashlight is exactly what it sounds like—a spacecraft that will shine infrared light on some of the permanently shadowed parts on the Moon in an effort to find water—and NASA is looking to launch next month.The brief-case sized satellite will scan the Moon’s south pole, where there could be reservoirs of ice water located inside permanently shadowed regions. Lunar Flashlight could locate…