NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace a $176.7 million contract to ship a pair of rovers and three scientific devices to the moon’s south pole.
Targeted for touchdown in 2029, the mission would be the first beneath NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to hold a number of rovers and devices in a single flight. They will discover a number of the moon’s harshest environments for the presence of usable sources to help future lunar excursions, together with crewed efforts.
The newly introduced award marks Firefly’s fifth CLPS job order and its fourth deliberate lunar mission. CLPS is NASA’s program for buying robotic supply providers to the floor of the moon from business U.S. corporations to allow extra frequent, lower-cost entry to the lunar floor.
CLPS is an integral a part of NASA’s Artemis program to determine a sustainable human presence on the moon, permitting the house company to extensively examine the setting that future astronauts shall be exploring.
“Through CLPS, NASA is embracing a new era of lunar exploration, with commercial companies leading the way,” Joel Kearns, deputy affiliate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, mentioned in a statement.
Firefly’s choice for this new CLPS job order contracts the corporate to supply full service to the lunar floor “with a period of performance from [July 29, 2025] to March 29, 2030,” the assertion says.
Firefly efficiently accomplished its first lunar touchdown and CLPS mission in March of this yr , delivering 10 NASA payloads to the moon’s close to aspect. The Texas-based firm’s second mission is scheduled for 2026, and can try a far aspect touchdown after deploying a lunar orbiter. Another mission, scheduled for 2028, will examine the volcanic terrain of the moon’s Gruithuisen Domes area.
This newly assigned job order consists of contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the University of Bern in Switzerland. The mission’s science package deal combines cell exploration, superior imaging and regolith evaluation to check the south pole’s geology and environmental sources. Here’s a quick rundown of what is going to fly on the mission:
- MoonRanger — An autonomous microrover from NASA’s Ames Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh firm Astrobotic, outfitted with a Neutron Spectrometer System for mapping hydrogen-bearing volatiles and characterizing regolith .
- Stereo Plume Cameras — An superior imaging system to look at how rocket exhaust interacts with the lunar floor throughout descent; developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia.
- Laser Retroreflector Array — Passive optically reflective markers to allow precision laser vary measurements from orbit, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
- CSA rover – Capable of exploring completely shadowed craters, measuring radiation, and trying to find water ice; outfitted with a number of imagers and spectrometers.
- Laser Ionization Mass Spectrometer – Analyzes regolith chemistry utilizing a Firefly-built robotic arm and excavation system robotic arm excavation system (University of Bern).
The moon’s south pole is house to completely shadowed areas which are believed to include giant portions of water ice — a essential useful resource that may be utilized for a variety of purposes from consuming water to rocket gas. NASA hopes to make use of knowledge gathered by the rovers and devices to information the most effective Artemis touchdown websites for future missions.
The mission may even examine environmental hazards like radiation and floor erosion. In the NASA assertion, Johnson Space Center CLPS supervisor Adam Schlesinger mentioned, “As NASA sends both humans and robots to further explore the moon, CLPS deliveries to the lunar south pole region will provide a better understanding of the exploration environment, accelerating progress toward establishing a long-term human presence on the moon, as well as eventual human missions to Mars.”