Masten Space’s lander will touchdown on the Moon’s south pole in November 2023. Further, there’s the company’s own NASA-supported hopper onboard called Micro-Nova, which will jump around the Moon with a camera to take high-resolution images of the surface under its flight path. The lander will also deploy a rover on the surface to test Nokia’s 4G/LTE network on the Moon, another first. The lander will drill up to 1 meter below the surface and analyze the soil for water ice, a first such study. On its second Moon mission in 2023, Intuitive Machines will deliver NASA’s PRIME-1 drill and a mass spectrometer to the Moon’s south pole. Such data will help scientists understand how water gets transported around the Moon, particularly from the equator to permanently shadowed regions on the poles, where it can remain preserved for billions of years. The mass spectrometer will also measure water and other volatiles released by the solar wind impinging the lunar soil. These include 11 NASA instruments, chief of which are three spectrometers to track the movements of water on the Moon’s surface. In 2023, Astrobotic’s lander will also touchdown in a lunar lava plain, Lacus Mortis, carrying 28 payloads from eight countries. This will help us quantify how rocket plumes interact with and kick off Moondust so that we can protect future surface spacecraft and habitats. Most notably, the lander will have stereo cameras to record how its engine plumes impact the surface. All landers on these missions will last a maximum of one lunar day - that is, 14 Earth days - since frigid nighttime temperatures, well below -100 degrees Celsius (-148 degrees Fahrenheit), will render the solar- and battery-powered landers non-functional.įor its first CLPS mission in late 2022, Intuitive Machines will carry six NASA payloads to Oceanus Procellarum, a dark lava plain on the Moon. These missions will also have non-NASA payloads from across the globe - something the agency encourages to spur a commercial lunar ecosystem. The agency only dictates preferences for the landing sites, and the instruments it wants onboard. Unlike traditional missions, these CLPS missions will be fully built, operated and managed by their companies, with minimal oversight from NASA. Mission 8, 2025: $73 million contract to Draper.Mission 7, 2024: $77.5 million contract to Intuitive Machines.Mission 6, November 2024: $226.5 million contract to Astrobotic.Mission 5, November 2023: $75.9 million contract to Masten Space.Mission 4, 2024: $93.3 million contract to Firefly.Mission 3, 2023: $47 million contract to Intuitive Machines.Mission 2, Q4 2022: $79.5 million contract to Astrobotic ( now delayed to 2023).Mission 1, Q4 2022: $77 million contract to Intuitive Machines.To date, NASA has funded four commercial companies for a total of seven CLPS Moon landing missions between 20 as follows:
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