by NASA’s next lunar car is starting to take shape.
The agency has selected three private teams – led by the companies Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab, respectively – to develop their versions of the Lunar Land Vehicle (LTV), the rover that will drive the Artemis astronauts around the south polar region of the moon starting. in the year 2030.
“We look forward to the development of the Artemis generation lunar exploration vehicle to help us advance what we learn on the moon,” Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, said in a statement today. “This vehicle will greatly increase our astronauts’ ability to explore and conduct science on the lunar surface while also serving as a science platform between crewed missions.”
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Each team will continue to develop their rover concept over the next 12 months, under a “feasibility task order” from the agency. The teams will then be eligible to compete for another NASA task order – one to build and get their vehicle to the moon in a key demonstration ahead of the Artemis 5 mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in March 2030.
“NASA expects to make an award to one provider for the demonstration,” agency officials wrote in today’s statement. “NASA will issue additional task orders to provide unpressurized rover capabilities for the agency’s moonwalk and science exploration needs through 2039.”
As that statement suggests, NASA will purchase router services, not the actual LTV(s). The arrangement is similar to the contracts the agency has signed with SpaceX for cargo and crew delivery services to the International Space Station, which the company completes with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
The total potential value of the LTV services contract is $4.6 billion for each award, NASA said in today’s statement. The selected team or teams will be responsible not only for building their rover, but also for getting it to the south polar region of the moon.
The LTV is the first lunar vehicle in the United States since the Lunar Roving Vehicle, which debuted on the Apollo 15 mission in 1971.
The new machine will resemble that famous “moon buggy” in several ways. It will be unpressurized, for example, which means astronauts riding it will have to keep their spacesuits on. It will also be a two-person vehicle, like the Apollo rover.
But the Artemis car will be different in several important ways. More importantly, it will be able to move without anyone in the driver’s seat, which the old moon buggy couldn’t do.
The LTV “will support astronaut-driven stages and stages as an unmanned mobile science exploration platform, such as NASA’s Curiosity and Endurance rovers on Mars,” NASA officials wrote in a statement in May 2023. “This will allow the continued performance of science even when crews are not present on the lunar surface.”
That work will take place near the moon’s south pole, where NASA aims to establish one or more Artemis bases. This part of the moon is thought to contain large amounts of water ice, which, if enough were found, could be used for astronaut life and processed into rocket fuel.
NASA has launched one Artemis mission so far – Artemis 1, which sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit (and back) in late 2022. Artemis 2 is scheduled to send four astronauts around the moon in September 2025, and will Artemis 3 boots down near the moon’s south pole a year later, if all goes according to plan.
NASA wants to have LTV on the moon before the arrival of the Artemis 5 crew in 2030. But if it is ready before then, the better.
“If they can get there sooner, we’ll take it sooner,” said Lara Kearney, manager of the Extraterrestrial Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program at JSC, in a press conference this afternoon.
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The wheels of LTV development started turning in February 2020, when NASA asked industry to come up with ideas for the nation’s next lunar rover.
The agency asked for additional input in August 2021. Then, on May 26 of last year, NASA released its official request for LTV proposals, with a submission deadline of July 10. The agency planned to win the pool that November but delayed the decision a day at a time. four months, until today.
One of the companies that made this first big cut – Houston-based Intuitive Machines – has already sent a vehicle to the moon. In February, Intuitive Machines’ robotic Odysseus lander became the first private spacecraft ever to make a soft lunar touch. Odysseus achieved that milestone under another NASA contract, awarded by the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
