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The eyebrow-raising contract comes as business participation in the space increases.
NASA said it will pay a private company one dollar to collect a sample of the moon as part of its initiative to solicit help from commercial companies to obtain lunar rocks and dust.
The US space agency announced Thursday that it had selected four companies to collect space resources and bring them back to NASA, including two US firms, a Japanese company and a Luxembourg-based company.
NASA said one of the American companies, Lunar Outpost of Golden, Colorado, proposed to collect only a $ 1 fee when returning samples after its lander reaches the moon in 2023.
Ispace Japan and Europe are charging $ 5,000 for lunar samples, and California’s Masten Space Systems is collecting $ 15,000.
In total, NASA says that total contracts with these companies amount to $ 25,001.
The partnership with the private sector to collect cosmic samples aims to support NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to get the first woman and next man to the moon by 2024.
“These awards extend NASA’s innovative use of public-private partnerships to the Moon. We are excited to join with our commercial and international partners to make Artemis the largest and most diverse global human space exploration coalition in history.” Mike Gold, NASA’s acting associate administrator for international and interagency relations, said in a statement.
“Space resources are the fuel that will propel America and all of humanity to the stars,” Gold added.
Phil McAlister, NASA Director of Commercial Space Flight Development, added that “leveraging commercial engagement enhances our ability to return to the Moon safely in a sustainable, innovative and affordable way.”
“A supportive policy for the recovery and use of space resources provides a stable and predictable investment environment for commercial space innovators and entrepreneurs,” said McAlister.
The companies are tasked with collecting a small number of lunar samples from anywhere on the moon, as well as providing NASA images of the collected material and the data that identify the location. The companies will then have to transfer ownership of the moon rock samples to NASA.
Lunar Outpost said its contract with NASA “signifies a paradigm shift in the way society thinks about space exploration.”
“As in the first space race, competition for national pride and an innate desire to explore will always play a factor in motivating humanity to push the limits of its expeditionary skills,” the company said. “However, this contract symbolizes a new incentive that will exponentially increase the potential for future missions and will be the main economic engine of the New Space economy for decades to come: access to the unlimited and priceless resources of space.”
To fulfill its contract, the Colorado firm said it will use its new rover, the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, to collect lunar samples for NASA. The rover is scheduled to land at the lunar South Pole in 2023.