NASA’s Headed Back To The Moon And Here Are Innovators That Will Help It Get There

The Artemis mission, scheduled to liftoff Monday, is to establish permanent human settlements on the Moon and, if all goes well, Mars

NASA begins a $90 billion-plus program this week to send Americans to the Moon with the launch of Artemis 1, a crewless expedition with the aim of eventually establishing a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. The launch could be as early as Monday, depending on the weather and equipment readiness.

Each of the first four Artemis launches, spread over the next few years, is expected to include no personnel and cost more than $4 billion. NASA says it’s returning to the Moon for three main reasons: discovery, inspiration for the next generation and economic opportunity. If the Artemis program is anything like its predecessor Apollo, which the space agency discontinued in the early 1970s after putting 12 astronauts on the Moon, it will yield useful products used by Americans every day. Apollo spawned the technology underpinning GPS, telecommunications satellites, DustBusters, Lasik eye surgery, shock absorbers for buildings, wireless headsets, CAT scans and air purifiers.

Fittingly, Artemis gets its name from the Greek Moon goddess who’s the twin of Apollo. The mission will test-drive the possibility of human life not only on the Moon but on Mars, putting humanity one step closer to being a multiple-planet species, according to Marshall Smith, a former high-ranking NASA official.

“There’s a whole plethora of reasons why it makes sense to continue this journey into space,” Smith told Forbes. “We spend this money building science and technology, developing our workforce to be able to do complicated systems and build complicated systems.”

NASA can’t do it alone. The agency is working with dozens of private companies and nonprofit institutions to make returning to the Moon a reality. Here’s a sample of how a few entrepreneurs, recent startups and other innovators are pitching in.

Moon Buggies

During the last three Apollo missions, the astronauts didn’t just walk on the Moon, they drove. That’s NASA’s plan for Artemis as well, and several companies are hard at work trying to build an astronaut’s dream car. These hopefuls are competing or working alongside behemoth defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Although the rovers won’t be used until 2025 at the earliest, it takes years to get it right.

One contributor is Louisville, Colorado-based Sierra Space, which revealed plans to build an Artemis rover in April. In partnership with carmaker Nissan and aerospace engineering firm Teledyne Brown, Sierra Space hopes to contribute communications and flight software. The company, which is also developing spacecraft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, was already working on rovers before entering into the partnership.

Sierra Space was founded in 2021 by billionaires Eren and Fatih Ozmen as a subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corp. It was valued at $4.5 billion after its most recent funding round in May took in $24.3 million. The company says it’s created over 4,000 space systems and components for around 500 missions.

Another company working on a new Moon buggy is California-based startup Astrolab, founded in 2020, which is in the process of building the “Flexible Logistics and Exploration” rover, or FLEX, which is designed to transport both cargo and people and has a capacity of about 3,300 pounds — comparable to a Ford F250 pickup truck. What sets FLEX apart from other rovers is its modular payload capability. It’s able to attach different cargoes and implements, whereas older Mars rovers such as Curiosity and Perseverance had a fixed payload.

“I think what makes our team unique is we have a really novel and innovative design with FLEX,” Jaret Matthews, founder and CEO of Astrolab, told Forbes. “This modular payload capability gives the rover tremendous versatility, and we think that’s necessary to accomplish things both when the astronauts are there, but also when they’re not there.”

Moon Dirt

When they return to the Moon, astronauts won’t just be hanging out in their new rides or smacking around golf balls. They’ll have science to do. The retrieval of regolith, a fancy word for moon rocks, is a vital part of the Artemis mission. That’s because NASA’s goal of establishing a livable society on the Moon depends on working with what’s available on the lunar surface to create things like agriculture. There’s also consideration paid to what might also work on Mars, asteroids or other celestial bodies.

The phrase “cheap as dirt” doesn’t apply to the Moon. In 2002, after three NASA interns stole Moon rocks from the Johnson Space Center lab in Houston, a value was assigned to the 48.5 pounds of regolith the Apollo astronauts brought back: around $1.1 billion. The interns were caught.

NASA has entrusted three companies to help them gather dust: Masten Space Systems, ispace and Lunar Outpost. The NASA payout they’ll be sharing is a laughably small $25,001. Why such a tiny amount? NASA used what it refers to as a “low-priced, technically acceptable” method of selection, and these companies still placed bids.

The Japanese and European divisions of Tokyo-based startup Ispace each have $5,000 contracts with NASA for help in the dirt-retrieval process. They plan to collect lunar soil samples and essentially sell them to NASA. This will be a historic moment as it will mark the first commercial transaction of lunar material to occur in space. Ispace’s Japanese team will have its micro rover and lander on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from which it will head to the northeastern side of the Moon to collect samples no later than November. Ispace Europe’s project will head to space in 2023, focusing on rocks at the lunar South Pole.

The company, valued at $193 million, according to Pitchbook, is focused on building a variety of lunar projects. It began life as a Google Lunar XPRIZE project. In 2010, the company’s founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada took that team, which was the only Japanese finalist out of the five competing for the XPRIZE project, and founded Ispace. The company’s U.S. division has another contract with NASA worth $73 million to carry its Commercial Lunar Payload Services to the Moon for later Artemis missions.

“We are pleased to receive these two awards from NASA for what will be a historic moment for humankind,” Hakamada via a statement. “For the space industry, as well as the potential for all industries on Earth, this marks the beginning of a cislunar economy where economic value can be created on the Moon, apart from Earth — but for the benefit of Earth’s economy.”

Slated to join Ispace Europe in 2023 at the lunar South Pole is Masten Space Systems. The Mojave, California-based company, founded in 2004, has the biggest contract out of the four rock extractors at $15,000. It also has an $81 million NASA contract to build a robotic lunar lander. Masten plans to retrieve lunar samples with a method called the Rocket Mining System that uses a rocket engine pressurized to dig into the surface.

Masten’s current financial situation may mean this never comes to pass. This month, after a summer of employee furloughs and layoffs, the company filed for bankruptcy as it struggled to keep up with the demands of its NASA contract. NASA said in a statement that if Masten is “unable to complete its task order,” the agency has made contingency plans.

Satellites The Size Of Cereal Boxes

For years, CubeSats — small research satellites — have been used to further space exploration by giving scientists, astronauts and researchers a look into what’s going on out there in the unknown. These satellites provide NASA with relatively inexpensive access to space, and Southwest Research Institute wants in on the action.

Southwest Research is the lead company working on the CubeSat for Solar Particles. CuSP is a cereal-box-sized weather-station nanosatellite that will be one of ten CubeSats hitching a ride on Artemis 1. Although the Artemis mission is focused on the Moon, this tiny satellite will be concentrated on the Sun, studying solar winds headed toward the Earth, as well as solar radiation and events. It will carry three instruments that help measure space weather. In 2014, Southwest Research signed a contract with NASA worth roughly $8.7 million for its participation in CuSP, according to Mihir Desai, director of the Department of Space Research, Space Science and Engineering at the institute.

Southwest Research, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, has been around for almost eight decades. The independent nonprofit was the recipient of almost $726 million in research funding in 2021 and the company has worked with NASA since 1970. Its first space mission, in 2000, marked NASA’s inaugural use of Earth’s magnetosphere imaging, which maps the part of space controlled by Earth’s magnetic field.

The institute’s goal for its satellites is to build a system that can predict bad solar weather, which has the potential to harm communications and electrical systems on Earth. According to Lloyd’s of London, a huge solar storm would cause hundreds of billions or possibly trillions of dollars in damage.

“What we want to be able to do in the long run is to be able to create a network of space weather monitors and a constellation,” Desai said. “In order to do accurate predictions of solar events that could potentially cause damage to the Earth system … we need a network that’s strategically distributed in interplanetary space.”

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