While NASA is working aggressively to meet our near-term goal of landing the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024, our Artemis program also is focused on taking steps that will establish a safe and sustainable lunar exploration architecture.
NASA is taking a critical step forward by releasing a solicitation for commercial companies to provide proposals for the collection of space resources.
To meet NASA’s requirements, a company will collect a small amount of Moon “dirt” or rocks from any location on the lunar surface, provide imagery to NASA of the collection and the collected material, along with data that identifies the collection location, and conduct an “in-place” transfer of ownership of the lunar regolith or rocks to NASA. After ownership transfer, the collected material becomes the sole property of NASA for our use.
NASA’s goal is that the retrieval and transfer of ownership will be completed before 2024. The solicitation creates a full and open competition, not limited to U.S. companies, and the agency may make one or more awards. The agency will determine retrieval methods for the transferred lunar regolith at a later date.
Over the next decade, the Artemis program will lay the foundation for a sustained long-term presence on the lunar surface and use the Moon to validate deep space systems and operations before embarking on the much farther voyage to Mars. The ability to conduct in-situ resources utilization (ISRU) will be incredibly important on Mars, which is why we must develop techniques and gain experience with ISRU on the surface of the Moon.
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3 Comments
What is their motivation? What exactly would the companies be competing for? Or is the objective simply for NASA to own samples (that it can’t actually analyze) from as many places on the moon as possible, and get it done as quickly as possible? It almost sounds like NASA is trying to stake a claim to as much moon real estate as they can.
Like Jim’s comment. Sorry it is not clear what is the objective. More clarity will be good help. How to identify the sample and how to notify NASA about the detail. Do we need to present any detail on why we (company) selected specific sample. If NASA will own it then what will company do at that point. Thanks
Doesn’t NASA already own moon rocks and dust collected by astronauts from 1969 into the 1970’s? What could be prompting this sudden solicitation to get moon rocks?