NASA on Tuesday awarded contracts to two companies to develop 21st-century versions of the lunar rovers that astronauts drove on the Apollo missions of the early 1970s.
Lunar Outpost of Golden, Colorado, and Venturi Astrolab of Hawthorne, California, will each receive about $220 million to build the vehicles.
Carlos García-Galán, who heads NASA's program to build a lunar base over the next decade, said the space agency wanted to have a rover ready on the Moon when the next astronauts arrive. That could be as early as 2028, when the mission known as Artemis IV is scheduled to land.
“It's absolutely a goal,” García-Galán said during a press conference Tuesday that provided an update on NASA's plans to build an outpost on the Moon.
The two new rovers (what NASA calls lunar terrain vehicles, or LTVs) will be much more capable than their Apollo predecessors. Each will weigh about a metric ton, have the ability to go up and down 20-degree slopes, and will be able to carry two astronauts. When there are no astronauts nearby, the rovers will be able to drive themselves or drivers on Earth will be able to take the wheel remotely.
Both vehicles have more modest designs than NASA had originally sought four years ago. At the time, NASA asked companies to make proposals for what was essentially a car rental service on the surface of the moon for 10 years. LTV requirements included a robotic arm and a maximum speed of 15 kilometers per hour. But in 2024, when NASA announced the finalists, which included Lunar Outpost and Astrolab, the space agency said only one winner would be selected and that it did not expect the vehicle to be ready until 2030.
When Jared Isaacman became NASA administrator this year, he decided to reduce requirements and accelerate the schedule. The maximum speed required is lower, 6.2 miles per hour; the robotic arm has fallen off; and instead of a 10-year contract, NASA is now asking for it to last only one year.
That will allow astronauts to make trips to the moon sooner. “I have no doubt that they will come back and give us feedback that will inform” the design of improved vehicles in the future, Isaacman said.
For Lunar Outpost and Astrolab, the accelerated timeline led to a mad rush to come up with new designs to fit NASA's new specifications, which were released in late March. Proposals were due May 1.
“We were able to put together a really credible response, because we had done a lot of work in the previous phase,” Jaret Matthews, Astrolab's chief executive, said in an interview.
The two companies now have to compete again to build the rovers in 18 months. But Justin Cyrus, CEO of Lunar Outpost, noted that the lunar rover used by the Apollo astronauts was developed in just 17 months.
“So we have a month more than during Apollo,” Cyrus said. “It's going to be complicated, but a lot of fun.”
NASA also announced that Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, had been awarded a contract worth up to $468 million to take rovers to the moon.
On Tuesday, NASA also awarded a $75 million contract to Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, to transport four robotic drones, under development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, to provide lunar surface reconnaissance in the south polar region, where the Artemis astronauts will land.
These drones will be able to jump quickly from one place to another.
“It will help us build a digital terrain map of the different landing sites on the Moon and prospect for lunar base sites,” García-Galán said. “So all of those things are going to be critical to continuing to understand where we're going.”
