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- NASA is paying $ 1 to Colorado’s Lunar Outpost startup to collect rocks and dust from the moon.
- On Thursday, the agency announced the four winning bidders for its first lunar material contracts.
- Businesses must collect small samples of lunar soil and share information about its location with NASA.
- NASA requested bids between $ 15,000 and $ 25,000, but approved the $ 1 offer because Lunar Outpost was already planning to collect lunar material.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
NASA is going to pay a 10-cent check to a company that collects moon rocks.
Colorado’s startup Lunar Outpost will collect “a small amount” of material from the surface of the moon’s south pole in 2023, NASA announced Thursday.
The total contract is worth $ 1, and the first payment represents 10% of the total.
NASA is paying commercial companies to provide it with small samples of lunar soil and share information about its location. Companies are not being paid to develop their spacecraft or return materials to Earth, he said.
“Is NASA going to pay a check for 10 cents [to Lunar Outpost]? The answer is yes, “Phil McAlister, NASA’s director of commercial space flight, said during a news conference Thursday.
The agency requested offers between $ 15,000 and $ 25,000 for the collection program, but approved the $ 1 offer because Lunar Outpost was already planning to collect lunar material, McAlister said.
Providing something to NASA alongside this “was actually trivial,” he said.
The company is currently undecided which lander it will fly with, Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told CNBC.
The agency named the aerospace technology company as one of four winning bidders for its first batch of lunar material contracts just days after China landed its Chang’e-5 spacecraft on the moon. The spacecraft is expected to bring lunar rocks to Earth for the first time in more than 40 years.
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The first batch of NASA grants announced Thursday amounted to $ 25,001.
In addition to $ 1 for Lunar Outpost, it will award $ 5,000 to Luxembourg’s ispace Europe and $ 15,000 to California’s Masten Space Systems. Like Lunar Outpost, both companies will collect material from the moon’s south pole in 2023.
It also announced a $ 5,000 contract with ispace Japan to collect material from the Lacus Somniorum area on the northeast surface of the Moon in 2022.
“These awards extend NASA’s innovative use of public-private partnerships to the Moon,” Mike Gold, NASA’s acting associate administrator for international and interagency relations, said in a press release Thursday.
NASA has not confirmed how it will retrieve the samples and did not say whether the material will reach Earth.
Why are ‘moon rocks’ important?
Lunar soil, or regolith, is a talc-like substance from pulverized rock and dust that settled after asteroids bombarded the moon’s surface billions of years ago. In the past, regolith has caused problems for the Apollo missions.
“If we are going to spend a lot of time and build permanent habitats, we have to figure out how to handle that,” astronaut Peggy Whitson previously told Business Insider.
Regolith measurements on the moon’s surface could help future spacecraft avoid problems.
“Space resources are the fuel that will propel America and all of humanity to the stars,” Gold said.
The ability to mine and use lunar resources will ensure future NASA missions are carried out safely, the agency said, including its Artemis program, which aims to get the first woman and next man to the moon to 2024.
This in situ resource utilization (ISRU) method will also play a “vital role” in future human missions to Mars, NASA added.
“ISRU’s activities will be tested and developed on the Moon, creating the knowledge required to implement new capabilities that will be necessary to overcome the challenges of a human mission to Mars,” he said.
