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74-503: The mission concept was still in its pre-formulation stage, when it was scrapped in April 2018. The Resource Prospector mission was proposed to be launched in 2022. Its science instruments will be flown on several commercial lander missions contracted with NASA's new Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The VIPER rover was developed as a successor of Resource Prospector, but it was also cancelled due to cost overruns. In February 1976,

148-480: A Falcon 9 rocket. The mission life would have been between 6 and 14 Earth days. The motivation and purpose of the mission was to characterize the nature and distribution of lunar water and other volatiles in lunar polar sub-surface materials, and to demonstrate in situ resource utilization (ISRU) processing of lunar soil by heating samples in an oven and isolating the resulting volatiles. The conceptual payload includes: The drill, NSS and NIRVSS spectrometers

222-561: A CLPS contract to Firefly Aerospace for a mission to deliver a suite of 10 science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023. On July 21, 2022, NASA announced that it had awarded a CLPS contract to Draper Laboratories. On August 29, 2024 NASA announced that it awarded another CLPS task order to Intuitive Machines. The six payloads include four from NASA, one from the European Space Agency and one from

296-747: A Draft Request for Proposal, and in September 2018 the CLPS Request for Proposal was issued as a formal solicitation. On November 29, 2018, NASA announced the first nine companies that would be allowed to bid on contracts, which were indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts with a combined maximum contract value of $ 2.6 billion over ten years. In February 2018, NASA issued a solicitation for Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads that may become CLPS customers. Proposals were due by November 2018 and January 17, 2019. NASA makes annual calls for proposals. On May 31, 2019, NASA announced

370-401: A detailed timeline and capability roadmap to 2040 but it assumes lunar landers in 2010 and 2012. The Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander was intended to carry to Mars a test payload, MIP (Mars ISPP Precursor), that was to demonstrate manufacture of oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars, but the mission was cancelled. The Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) is a 1% scale prototype model aboard

444-630: A drill to extract samples of the lunar soil from as deep as one meter below the surface. The Taiwanese National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology was responsible for developing the rover's sensor system. In September 2015, the rover prototype underwent field testing, and in May 2016, the prototype rover underwent thermal vacuum and thermal testing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston , Texas . Before its cancellation, NASA officials were exploring various launch options, including to fly it as

518-544: A list of awards, to Astrobotic , of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, $ 79.5 million; Intuitive Machines , of Houston, Texas, $ 77 million; and OrbitBeyond , $ 97 million; to launch their Moon landers. However, Orbit Beyond dropped out in July 2019 (with NASA acknowledging termination of contract on July 29, 2019), but remained able to bid on future missions. In January 2024, NASA reported the initial award to Astrobotic had grown to $ 108 million, to carry five NASA science payloads instead of

592-508: A must for missions in the lunar far side. Many companies are involved in the mission with Draper being the prime contractor, including ispace . On September 29, 2023, ispace announced that the SERIES-2 lander had been comprehensively redesigned and renamed as APEX 1.0, causing the mission to be delayed to 2026. Masten Space Systems filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, with nearly all their assets sold to Astrobotic Technology . This led to

666-451: A nuclear or solar thermal rocket , which may be able to deliver a large mass from the Moon to low Earth orbit (LEO) in spite of the much lower specific impulse , for a given amount of equipment. The monopropellant hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) can be made from water on Mars and the Moon. Aluminum as well as other metals has been proposed for use as rocket propellant made using lunar resources, and proposals include reacting

740-524: A polar region for signs of water ice or lunar pits for entrances to Moon caves. The rover would operate mostly autonomously for up to one week. On November 18, 2019, NASA added five contractors to the group of companies eligible to bid to deliver large payloads to the lunar surface under the CLPS program: Blue Origin , Ceres Robotics , Sierra Nevada Corporation , SpaceX , and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems . On April 8, 2020, NASA announced it had awarded

814-402: A ready supply of water in the environment and the equipment to extract it. Such extraterrestrial water has been discovered in a variety of forms throughout the solar system, and a number of potential water extraction technologies have been investigated. For water that is chemically bound to regolith , solid ice, or some manner of permafrost, sufficient heating can recover the water. However this

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888-439: A robotic return to the Moon, sample return , resource prospecting in the south polar region , and promote innovation and growth of related commercial industries. The payload development program is called Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation (DALI), and the payload goals are exploration, in situ resource utilization ( ISRU ), and lunar science. The first instruments were expected to be selected by summer 2019, and

962-603: A secondary payload on board the second flight of the Space Launch System , called the Artemis 2 in 2022. Another reported launch option was the Falcon Heavy rocket. The Resource Prospector team was notified on 23 April 2018 to cease all work on the project by the end of May 2018. The concept was going to be submitted for a major design review by the end of 2018 for funding, development and launch. This rover

1036-527: A service by the CLPS vendor. Lunar-VISE will study a rare form of lunar volcanism. Lunar-VISE will be sent to one of the Gruithuisen Domes: Mons Gruithuisen Gamma or Mons Gruithuisen Delta . The Lunar Explorer Instrument for space biology Applications (LEIA) science suite, is a small CubeSat-based device. LEIA will provide biological research on the Moon – which cannot be simulated or replicated with high fidelity on

1110-603: A way to drastically reduce the amount of payload that must be launched from Earth in order to explore a given planetary body . According to NASA , "in-situ resource utilization will enable the affordable establishment of extraterrestrial exploration and operations by minimizing the materials carried from Earth." In the context of ISRU, water is most often sought directly as fuel or as feedstock for fuel production. Applications include its use in life support, either directly for drinking, for growing food , producing oxygen , or numerous other industrial processes, all of which require

1184-605: Is by no means certain that NASA or the ESA will favour this approach over a more conventional direct mission. A typical proposal for ISRU is the use of a Sabatier reaction , CO 2 + 4H 2 → CH 4 + 2H 2 O , in order to produce methane on the Martian surface, to be used as a propellant. Oxygen is liberated from the water by electrolysis , and the hydrogen recycled back into the Sabatier reaction. The usefulness of this reaction

1258-632: Is called a Propulsive Fluid Accumulator . Atmospheric gases like oxygen and argon could be extracted from the atmosphere of planets like the Earth, Mars, and the outer giant planets by Propulsive Fluid Accumulator satellites in low orbit. In October 2004, NASA's Advanced Planning and Integration Office commissioned an ISRU capability roadmap team. The team's report, along with those of 14 other capability roadmap teams, were published 22 May 2005. The report identifies seven ISRU capabilities: The report focuses on lunar and martian environments. It offers

1332-491: Is not as easy as it appears because ice and permafrost can often be harder than plain rock, necessitating laborious mining operations. Where there is some level of atmosphere, such as on Mars, water can be extracted directly from the air using a simple process such as WAVAR . Another possible source of water is deep aquifers kept warm by Mars's latent geological heat, which can be tapped to provide both water and geothermal power. Rocket propellant production has been proposed from

1406-682: Is required. Glass and glass fiber are straightforward to process on the Moon and Mars. Basalt fibre has also been made from lunar regolith simulators. Successful tests have been performed on Earth using two lunar regolith simulants MLS-1 and MLS-2 . In August 2005, NASA contracted for the production of 16 tonnes of simulated lunar soil, or lunar regolith simulant material for research on how lunar soil could be used in situ . Other proposals are based on Phobos and Deimos . These moons are in reasonably high orbits above Mars, have very low escape velocities, and unlike Mars have return delta-v 's from their surfaces to LEO which are less than

1480-422: Is that—as of 2008 , when the availability of water on Mars was less scientifically demonstrated—only the hydrogen (which is light) was thought to need to be brought from Earth. As of 2018 , SpaceX has stated their goal of developing the technology for a Mars propellant plant that could use a variation on what is described in the previous paragraph. Rather than transporting hydrogen from Earth to use in making

1554-425: Is the electrolysis of the atmospheric carbon dioxide, It has also been proposed the in situ production of oxygen, hydrogen and CO from the Martian hematite deposits via a two-step thermochemical CO 2 /H 2 O splitting process, and specifically in the magnetite / wüstite redox cycle. Although thermolysis is the most direct, one-step process for splitting molecules, it is neither practical nor efficient in

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1628-473: Is the practice of collection, processing, storing and use of materials found or manufactured on other astronomical objects (the Moon, Mars, asteroids, etc.) that replace materials that would otherwise be brought from Earth. ISRU could provide materials for life support , propellants , construction materials , and energy to a spacecraft payloads or space exploration crews. It is now very common for spacecraft and robotic planetary surface mission to harness

1702-526: Is to use fluorine brought from Earth as potassium fluoride to separate the raw materials from the lunar rocks. Over twenty different methods have been proposed for oxygen extraction from the lunar regolith. Oxygen is often found in iron-rich lunar minerals and glasses as iron oxide . The oxygen can be extracted by heating the material to temperatures above 900 °C and exposing it to hydrogen gas. The basic equation is: FeO + H 2 → Fe + H 2 O. This process has recently been made much more practical by

1776-475: The Artemis lunar program . CLPS is intended to buy end-to-end payload services between Earth and the lunar surface using fixed-price contracts . The program achieved the first landing on the Moon by a commercial company in history with the IM-1 mission in 2024. The program was extended to add support for large payloads starting after 2025. The CLPS program is run by NASA's Science Mission Directorate along with

1850-666: The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Notes: The CLPS contracts for landers and lander missions do not include the payloads themselves. The payloads are developed under separate contracts either at NASA facilities or in commercial facilities. The CLPS landers provide landing, support services, and sample return as specified in each individual contract. The first batch of science payloads are being developed in NASA facilities, due to

1924-462: The Mars 2020 rover Perseverance that produces oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide ( CO 2 ) in a process called solid oxide electrolysis . The experiment produced its first 5.37 grams of oxygen on 20 April 2021. The lunar Resource Prospector rover was designed to scout for resources on a polar region of the Moon, and it was proposed to be launched in 2022. The mission concept

1998-617: The Moon itself and progressing to the use of lunar resources to underpin a future industrial capability within the Earth-Moon system. Natural resources include solar power, oxygen, water, hydrogen, and metals. The lunar highland material anorthite can be used as aluminium ore . Smelters can produce pure aluminium, calcium metal, oxygen and silica glass from anorthite. Raw anorthite is also good for making fiberglass and other glass and ceramic products. One particular processing technique

2072-493: The Moon or Mars . Metallic asteroids contain huge amounts of siderophilic metals , including precious metals . ISRU research for Mars is focused primarily on providing rocket propellant for a return trip to Earth—either for a crewed or a sample return mission—or for use as fuel on Mars. Many of the proposed techniques use the well-characterised atmosphere of Mars as feedstock. Since this can be simulated on Earth, these proposals are relatively simple to implement, though it

2146-541: The NASA administrator , James Bridenstine laying their case to reverse the decision, and remarked that other nations are preparing landers to stake claim on the natural resources on the south polar region of the Moon. In a 3 May 2018 statement, NASA officials explained that lunar surface exploration will continue in the future, but using commercial lander services under a new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Some of these commercial landers will be equipped with

2220-413: The solar radiation found in situ in the form of solar panels . The use of ISRU for material production has not yet been implemented in a space mission, though several field tests in the late 2000s demonstrated various lunar ISRU techniques in a relevant environment. ISRU has long been considered as a possible avenue for reducing the mass and cost of space exploration architectures, in that it may be

2294-466: The 2023–2024 timeframe. In June 2022, NASA announced the selection of two new payloads from its Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) call for proposals. The Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE) investigation is a suite of five instruments, two of which will be mounted on a stationary lander and three mounted on a mobile rover to be provided as

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2368-518: The Earth or International Space Station – by delivering the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to the lunar surface and studying its response to radiation and lunar gravity. Saccharomyces cerevisiae serves as a model organism used to understand DNA damage response and repair. Orbit Beyond returned their task order (cancelling their mission) two months after award in 2019. That mission is not listed below. In situ resource utilization In space exploration , in situ resource utilization ( ISRU )

2442-507: The Human Exploration and Operations and Space Technology Mission directorates. NASA expects the contractors to provide all activities necessary to safely integrate, accommodate, transport, and operate NASA payloads, including launch vehicles, lunar lander spacecraft, lunar surface systems, Earth re-entry vehicles and associated resources. Eight missions have been contracted under the program (not counting one mission contract that

2516-411: The Moon's surface by processing water ice detected at the poles . The likely difficulties include working at extremely low temperatures and extraction of water from the regolith . Most schemes electrolyse the water to produce hydrogen and oxygen and cryogenically store them as liquids. This requires large amounts of equipment and power to achieve. Alternatively, it may be possible to heat water in

2590-410: The Moon, and payload operations. On July 21, 2022, NASA announced that it had awarded a CLPS contract (8th, not counting OrbitBeyond) worth $ 73 million to a team led by the company Draper. The mission targeted Schrödinger Basin on the farside of the Moon, planned for 2025. The mission lander, called SERIES-2 by Draper, would deliver to Schrödinger Basin three experiments to collect seismic data, measure

2664-716: The Soviet lander Luna 24 sent a sample of lunar soil to Earth , where it was found to contain about 0.1% water. Data obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Chandrayaan-1 , and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), revealed that lunar water is distributed widely (if thinly) across the Moon's surface. The Resource Prospector mission concept proposes a NASA-led collaboration that seeks international space agencies and private industry partners to maximize

2738-613: The Surface of the Moon (PRISM), Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation (DALI), Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) Instruments and Artemis Surface Instruments. LDEP aspires to conduct at least two CLPS missions per year. Delivery missions for these payloads were solicited in batches. The first twelve NASA payloads and experiments were announced on February 21, 2019, and will fly on separate missions. As of February 2021 NASA has awarded contracts for four CLPS lander missions to support these payloads. On July 1, 2019, NASA announced

2812-519: The aluminum with water. For Mars, methane propellant can be manufactured via the Sabatier process. SpaceX has suggested building a propellant plant on Mars that would use this process to produce methane ( CH 4 ) and liquid oxygen (O 2 ) from sub-surface water ice and atmospheric CO 2 . It has long been suggested that solar cells could be produced from the materials present in lunar soil. Silicon, aluminium, and glass, three of

2886-517: The approved prime contractors can bid. A Scope Of Work will be issued with each task order. The CLPS proposals are being evaluated against five Technical Accessibility Standards. NASA is assuming a cost of one million dollars per kilogram delivered to the lunar surface. (This figure may be revised after a lunar landing when the actual costs are available.) The companies selected are considered "main contractors" that can sub-contract projects to other companies of their choice. The first companies granted

2960-406: The building blocks for more complex reaction series which are able to make plastics. Ethylene is used to make plastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene and can be made from carbon monoxide and hydrogen: The Moon possesses abundant raw materials that are potentially relevant to a hierarchy of future applications, beginning with the use of lunar materials to facilitate human activities on

3034-400: The cancellation of Masten's CLPS mission. On March 14, 2023, NASA awarded Firefly a $ 112 million task order (8th CLPS contract, not counting OrbitBeyond or Masten Space Systems) for a mission to the far side of the Moon using the second Blue Ghost lander, expected to launch in 2026. The competitive nature of the CLPS program is expected to reduce the cost of lunar exploration, accelerate

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3108-449: The case of either H 2 O or CO 2 . This is because the process requires a very high temperature (> 2,500 °C) to achieve a useful dissociation fraction. This poses problems in finding suitable reactor materials, losses due to vigorous product recombination, and excessive aperture radiation losses when concentrated solar heat is used. The magnetite/wustite redox cycle was first proposed for solar application on earth by Nakamura, and

3182-564: The concept study on the Resource Prospector rover was cancelled in April 2018, NASA officials explained that lunar surface exploration would continue in the future, but using commercial lander services under a new CLPS program. Later that April, NASA announced the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program as the first step in the solicitation for flights to the Moon. In April 2018, CLPS issued

3256-476: The discovery of significant amounts of hydrogen -containing regolith near the Moon's poles by the Clementine spacecraft . Lunar materials may also be used as a general construction material, through processing techniques such as sintering , hot-pressing, liquification , and the cast basalt method. Cast basalt is used on Earth for construction of, for example, pipes where a high resistance to abrasion

3330-561: The effect of Martian dust on the power systems, but the project was cancelled. The Mars 2020 rover mission includes an ISRU technology demonstrator (the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment ) that will extract CO 2 from the atmosphere and produce O 2 . It has been suggested that buildings on Mars could be made from basalt as it has good insulating properties. An underground structure of this type would be able to protect life forms against radiation exposure. All of

3404-603: The flight opportunities were expected to start in 2021. Multiple contracts will be issued, and the early payloads will likely be small because of the limited capacity of the initial commercial landers. The first landers and rovers will be technology demonstrators on hardware such as precision landing/hazard avoidance, power generation ( solar and RTGs ), in situ resource utilization ( ISRU ), cryogenic fluid management, autonomous operations and sensing , and advanced avionics , mobility, mechanisms, and materials . This program requires that only US launch vehicles can launch

3478-483: The fourth (after Astrobotic's, Intuitive Machines' and OrbitBeyond's awards) CLPS contract for Masten Space Systems . The contract, worth $ 75.9 million, was for Masten's XL-1 lunar lander to deliver payloads from NASA and other customers to the south pole of the Moon in late 2022. On June 11, 2020, NASA awarded Astrobotic Technology its second CLPS contract. The mission would be the first flight of Astrobotic's larger Griffin lander. Griffin weighs 450 kg. The award

3552-464: The group of companies who are eligible to bid to send large payloads to the surface of the Moon with the CLPS program. On April 8, 2020, NASA selected Masten Space Systems for a mission to deliver and operate eight payloads – with nine science and technology instruments – to the Moon's South Pole in 2022. Masten Space Systems filed for bankruptcy in July 2022; this led to the cancellation of Masten's CLPS mission. On February 4, 2021, NASA awarded

3626-413: The heat flow and electrical conductivity of the lunar subsurface and measure electromagnetic phenomena created by the interaction of the solar wind and plasma with the lunar surface. This mission would be the first CLPS mission to target the lunar far side, and aims to be the second landing (after China's Chang'e-4 ) to the Moon's far side. The mission would also develop and deploy two data relay satellites,

3700-471: The ice drill and scientific instruments developed for the Resource Prospector. NASA officials stated that under this program, Resource Prospector instruments will go forward in an expanded lunar surface campaign, instead of the original two weeks. Preliminary studies call for a rover of about 300 kg (660 lb), that would measure 1.4 m x 1.4 m x 2 m. It was suggested to be launched with

3774-525: The initial number of 14, and that the contract value for Intuitive Machines had increased to $ 118 million. On July 1, 2019, a $ 5.6 million contract was awarded to Astrobotic and its partner Carnegie Mellon University to develop MoonRanger , a 13 kg (29 lb) rover to carry payloads on the Moon for NASA's CLPS. Launch was envisioned for either 2021 or 2022. The rover would carry science payloads yet to be determined and developed by other providers, that would focus on scouting and creating 3D maps of

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3848-519: The lunar surface. Solar arrays produced on the lunar surface may prove more cost effective than solar arrays produced and shipped from Earth, but this trade depends heavily on the location of the particular application in question. Another potential application of lunar-derived solar arrays is providing power to Earth. In its original form, known as the solar power satellite , the proposal was intended as an alternate power source for Earth . Solar cells would be launched into Earth orbit and assembled, with

3922-508: The methane and oxygen, they have said they plan to mine the requisite water from subsurface water ice , produce and then store the post-Sabatier reactants, and then use it as propellant for return flights of their Starship no earlier than 2023. As of 2023 SpaceX has not produced or published any designs, specifications for any ISRU technology. A similar reaction proposed for Mars is the reverse water gas shift reaction , CO 2 + H 2 → CO + H 2 O . This reaction takes place rapidly in

3996-431: The presence of an iron-chrome catalyst at 400 °C, and has been implemented in an Earth-based testbed by NASA. Again, hydrogen is recycled from the water by electrolysis , and the reaction only needs a small amount of hydrogen from Earth. The net result of this reaction is the production of oxygen, to be used as the oxidizer component of rocket fuel. Another reaction proposed for the production of oxygen and fuel

4070-416: The primary materials required for solar cell production, are found in high concentrations in lunar soil and can be used to produce solar cells. In fact, the native vacuum on the lunar surface provides an excellent environment for direct vacuum deposition of thin-film materials for solar cells. Solar arrays produced on the lunar surface can be used to support lunar surface operations as well as satellites off

4144-477: The resources required to make plastics exist on Mars. Many of these complex reactions are able to be completed from the gases harvested from the martian atmosphere. Traces of free oxygen, carbon monoxide, water and methane are all known to exist. Hydrogen and oxygen can be made by the electrolysis of water, carbon monoxide and oxygen by the electrolysis of carbon dioxide and methane by the Sabatier reaction of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. These basic reactions provide

4218-753: The resultant generated power being transmitted down to Earth via microwave beams. Despite much work on the cost of such a venture, the uncertainty lay in the cost and complexity of fabrication procedures on the lunar surface. The colonization of planets or moons will require obtaining local building materials , such as regolith . For example, studies employing artificial Mars soil mixed with epoxy resin and tetraethoxysilane , produce high enough values of strength, resistance, and flexibility parameters. Asteroid mining could also involve extraction of metals for construction material in space, which may be more cost-effective than bringing such material up out of Earth 's deep gravity well, or that of any other large body like

4292-530: The return from the Moon. Ceres is further out than Mars, with a higher delta-v, but launch windows and travel times are better, and the surface gravity is just 0.028 g, with a very low escape velocity of 510 m/s. Researchers have speculated that the interior configuration of Ceres includes a water-ice-rich mantle over a rocky core. Near Earth Asteroids and bodies in the asteroid belt could also be sources of raw materials for ISRU. Proposals have been made for "mining" for rocket propulsion , using what

4366-408: The right to bid on CLPS contracts were chosen in 2018. On May 21, 2019, three companies were awarded lander contracts: Astrobotic Technology , Intuitive Machines , OrbitBeyond . On July 29, 2019, NASA announced that it had granted OrbitBeyond's request to be released from this specific contract, citing "internal corporate challenges." On November 18, 2019, NASA added five new contractors to

4440-408: The selection of twelve additional payloads, provided by universities and industry. Seven of these are scientific investigations while five are technology demonstrations. In June 2021, NASA announced the selection of three payloads from its Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) call for proposals. These payloads will be sent to Reiner Gamma and Schrödinger Basin in

4514-712: The short time available before the first planned flights. Subsequent selections include payloads provided by universities and industry. Calls for payloads are planned to be released each year for additional opportunities. The Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program (LDEP) within the NASA Science Mission Directorate establishes contracts for the CLPS program and selects lunar science instruments that will use CLPS services. The CLPS Lunar Instrument Development process includes NASA Provided Lunar Payloads (NPLP), Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads (LSITP), Payloads and Research Investigations on

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4588-434: The spacecraft. The mass of the landers and rovers can range from miniature to 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), with a 500 kg (1,100 lb) lander targeted to launch in 2022. The Draft Request for Proposal's covering letter states that the contracts will last up to 10 years. As NASA's need to send payloads to the lunar surface (and other cislunar destinations) arises, it will issue Firm-Fixed Price 'task orders' on which

4662-418: The strong hematite deposits located at Terra Meridiani . The use of wustite from the hematite, abundantly available on Mars, is an industrial process well known on Earth, and is performed by the following two main reduction reactions: The proposed 2001 Mars Surveyor lander was to demonstrate manufacture of oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars , and test solar cell technologies and methods of mitigating

4736-470: The surface. The mission was scheduled for December 2022, using a Falcon 9 rocket. On February 4, 2021, NASA awarded a CLPS contract to Firefly Aerospace , of Cedar Park, Texas , for approximately $ 93.3 million, to deliver a suite of 10 science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023 (later delayed to 2024). This was the sixth award (seventh counting the OrbitBeyond award that

4810-399: The thermal input of energy if compared with the most direct, one-step process for splitting molecules. However, the process needs wüstite (FeO) to start the cycle, but on Mars there is no wustite or at least not in significant amounts. Nevertheless, wustite can be easily obtained by reduction of hematite (Fe 2 O 3 ) which is an abundant material on Mars, being especially conspicuous are

4884-492: The value. However, it is unclear if the use of lunar resources is permitted under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty signed by the United States , Russia , and 90 other countries. Hydrogen and oxygen can be used to make vital consumables, but also, to make rocket fuel , and basic materials required for in-space manufacturing. The technical process is called in situ resource utilization or ISRU. The rover would have used

4958-515: Was be launched in 2022 on board the VIPER rover , but even this mission was cancelled. Commercial Lunar Payload Services Commercial Lunar Payload Services ( CLPS ) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon . Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources , test in situ resource utilization (ISRU) concepts, and perform lunar science to support

5032-399: Was contracted to land four NASA payloads (about 92 kg in total) to study a lunar feature called Reiner Gamma . The mission was known as IM-3 mission and was planned to land on the Moon in 2024. The contract value was $ 77.5 million and under the contract, Intuitive Machines was responsible for end-to-end delivery services, including payload integration, delivery from Earth to the surface of

5106-510: Was for $ 199.5 million which covers Griffin lander and launch costs. The mission was scheduled for November 2024. On October 16, 2020, NASA awarded Intuitive Machines their second CLPS contract for Intuitive Machines Mission 2 (IM-2). The contract was worth approximately $ 47 million. Using a Nova-C lander, the mission would land a drill ( PRIME-1 ) combined with a mass spectrometer near the Lunar south pole , to attempt harvesting ice from below

5180-432: Was in its pre-formulation stage, and a prototype rover was being tested when it was scrapped in April 2018. Its science instruments will be flown instead on several commercial lander missions contracted by NASA's new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLSP) program, that aims to focus on testing various lunar ISRU processes by landing several payloads on multiple commercial landers and rovers. The first formal solicitation

5254-462: Was later cancelled) for lunar surface delivery (a lunar lander) under the CLPS initiative. This was the first delivery awarded to Firefly Aerospace, which would provide the lunar delivery service using its Blue Ghost lander, designed and developed at the company Cedar Park facility. The next (seventh, not counting the OrbitBeyond contract) CLPS contract was awarded by NASA on November 17, 2021 to Intuitive Machines, their 3rd award. Their Nova-C lander

5328-420: Was one of the first used for solar-driven two-step water splitting . In this cycle, water reacts with wustite (FeO) to form magnetite (Fe 3 O 4 ) and hydrogen. The summarised reactions in this two-step splitting process are as follows: and the obtained FeO is used for the thermal splitting of water or CO 2  : This process is repeated cyclically. The above process results in a substantial reduction in

5402-419: Was revoked after awarding and another mission contract that was cancelled after the contracted company went bankrupt). NASA has been planning the exploration and use of natural lunar resources for many years. A variety of exploration, science, and technology objectives that could be addressed by regularly sending instruments, experiments and other small payloads to the Moon have been identified by NASA. When

5476-495: Was the only mission in conceptual development by NASA to explore the surface of the Moon in situ . Apparently, the cancellation stemmed from the program being moved to another Division with an insufficient budget to fund this mission. US$ 100 million were already spent on the rover's instruments over ten years. Scientists involved in the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group sent a letter on 26 April 2018 to

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