Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has won NASA’s nod to deliver crew-carrying rovers to the lunar surface as part of the space agency’s decade-long plan to create a base near the moon’s south pole.
“America is returning to the moon,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said today during a news briefing at the space agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We are working alongside our many international and commercial partners to leverage the incredible capabilities from commercial industry to build a moon base for all we hope to accomplish in this endeavor.”
NASA awarded Blue Origin an initial $188 million contract to get its robotic Blue Moon Mark 1 lander ready to deliver lunar terrain vehicles, or LTVs, with an option period worth an additional $280.4 million for two task orders. The option period will be based on Blue Origin’s performance during the initial contract phase, NASA said.
Carlos Garcia-Galan, program manager for NASA’s Moon Base program, said the LTVs will be “a mix between the Apollo lunar roving vehicle and the Mars-style rover.” Each rover will weigh a little less than one metric ton, he said, and will be folded up to fit on Blue Origin’s lander during transit to the moon.
The first LTV is due to be brought to the moon in advance of the Artemis 4 mission’s crewed landing, which is currently scheduled for 2028, Garcia-Galan said.
One of the LTVs will be built by California-based Astrolab, with Seattle-based Interlune serving as a subcontractor. In a LinkedIn post, Interlune said it would work with Astrolab on “many aspects of the rover development, involving the science of survival in the lunar environment.” The Interlune Research Lab in Texas will develop varieties of simulated moon dirt specifically for testing Astrolab’s moon rover, which has been designated CLV-1.
The other LTV will be Colorado-based Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus rover, which is being developed in partnership with General Motors, Goodyear and Leidos.
