NASA taps Blue Origin to deliver lunar rovers for Moon Base initiative

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has won NASA’s nod to deliver crew-carrying rovers to the lunar surface as part of the space agency’s decade-long plan to create a base near the moon’s south pole.

“America is returning to the moon,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said today during a news briefing at the space agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We are working alongside our many international and commercial partners to leverage the incredible capabilities from commercial industry to build a moon base for all we hope to accomplish in this endeavor.”

NASA awarded Blue Origin an initial $188 million contract to get its robotic Blue Moon Mark 1 lander ready to deliver lunar terrain vehicles, or LTVs, with an option period worth an additional $280.4 million for two task orders. The option period will be based on Blue Origin’s performance during the initial contract phase, NASA said.

Carlos Garcia-Galan, program manager for NASA’s Moon Base program, said the LTVs will be “a mix between the Apollo lunar roving vehicle and the Mars-style rover.” Each rover will weigh a little less than one metric ton, he said, and will be folded up to fit on Blue Origin’s lander during transit to the moon.

The first LTV is due to be brought to the moon in advance of the Artemis 4 mission’s crewed landing, which is currently scheduled for 2028, Garcia-Galan said.

One of the LTVs will be built by California-based Astrolab, with Seattle-based Interlune serving as a subcontractor. In a LinkedIn post, Interlune said it would work with Astrolab on “many aspects of the rover development, involving the science of survival in the lunar environment.” The Interlune Research Lab in Texas will develop varieties of simulated moon dirt specifically for testing Astrolab’s moon rover, which has been designated CLV-1.

The other LTV will be Colorado-based Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus rover, which is being developed in partnership with General Motors, Goodyear and Leidos.

Both LTVs are designed to travel at speeds of up to 10 kilometers per hour (6 mph), carrying up to two astronauts on 10-kilometer (6-mile) trips. The rovers could also take on robotic excursions with a maximum range of 200 kilometers (125 miles). Astrolab is receiving a $219 million contract, while Lunar Outpost’s contract is worth $220 million, NASA said.

In a statement posted to X, Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin said it was proud to support NASA’s plans for a permanent presence in the moon’s south polar region. The company’s CEO, Dave Limp, also gave a shout-out to Isaacman on his social-media account.

“Since the beginning, Blue Origin has been committed to Lunar Permanence,” Limp wrote. “Thank you, @NASAadmin, for sharing that vision. We’re ready to make it a reality.”

NASA will also develop a fleet of rocket-powered MoonFall drones for reconnaissance and communications. The drones will be built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Garcia-Galan said they’d be dropped off at the moon by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace’s Elytra Dark spacecraft. Firefly said its contract for a four-drone delivery is worth $75 million.

NASA’s Moon Base program could get its official kickoff as early as this fall with the launch of Endurance, Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. Endurance, which is currently going through preflight testing, is scheduled to deliver several payloads to the moon’s south polar region — including a retroreflector system for gauging distances and a camera system for studying how thrusters interact with the moon’s surface. This first Blue Moon mission has been on the schedule for more than a year, but Garcia-Galan said it is now known as Moon Base 1.

The Moon Base 2 mission calls for a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to deliver Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s Griffin lander to the moon later this year. Griffin will be carrying more than 1,100 pounds of cargo. One of the payloads is an Astrolab rover that’s outfitted with an Interlune imaging system capable of surveying the lunar surface for traces of valuable helium-3.

For the Moon Base 3 mission, Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lander will fly the first payload selected through a NASA initiative known as Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon, or PRISM. Lunar Vertex will study lunar swirls — bright spots on the moon’s surface that are thought to be caused by magnetic anomalies. The lander will also carry payloads for the European Space Agency and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.

“These represent the first of more than a dozen missions we expect to announce through the balance of this year, as we return, build the base, and never give up the moon again,” Isaacman said.

Moon Base 1 and the LTV deliveries aren’t the only lunar missions in which Blue Origin is playing a key role. For example, the company’s second Mark 1 lander has been tasked with delivering NASA’s robotic VIPER rover to the lunar surface in late 2027.

Blue Origin is also working on a Blue Moon Mark 2 lunar lander that could carry future Artemis crews to the lunar surface. NASA is aiming to test the Mark 2 and/or SpaceX’s Starship-based lunar lander next year in low Earth orbit during the Artemis 3 mission.

“We’re already moving forward pretty strongly with both Blue Origin and SpaceX on their lander concepts,” said Lori Glaze, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate. “There’s a lot of trade studies ongoing right now, just to make sure we’ve got the mission designs right and the right objectives for those.”

Isaacman said NASA’s strategy called for “leveraging the NASA playbook from the 1960s, figuring out what works and what doesn’t in this epic science of survival.”

The announcements that were made today focused on the first phase of NASA’s Moon Base plan, which aims to establish reliable access to the lunar surface and characterize resources at the south polar region, where significant reserves of water ice are thought to exist.

The second phase of the project, scheduled for the 2029-2032 time frame, calls for setting up infrastructure for lunar operations, including energy facilities that rely on solar or nuclear power. During the third phase, NASA and its partners would establish a permanent base.

“We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles, with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence,” Garcia-Galan said.

Isaacman said there are “a lot of great things that will come from having an outpost on the moon,” with the ability to prepare for farther-out missions leading his list.

“There will be scientific discoveries,” he said. “Let’s land rovers with radio telescopes to go to the far side moon. Let’s ignite an orbital economy. These are all things that would be nice to have and achieve along the way, but really it is to have an environment where we can work with the water ice and master the skills for where we go next, which is Mars. … We want to be in an environment where we can learn the skills, so that astronauts can go and plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars someday.”

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