On May 30, more than 10 million online viewers watched SpaceX’s launch of its Falcon 9 rocket carry two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. The launch was a milestone in several regards: it was the first private-company mission to put humans in orbit, was the first crewed launch from U.S. soil since 2011, and set a new record for online viewership.
NASA appears to have fully embraced the private company partnerships, announcing one earlier this month aimed at the hunt for water on the Moon.
The agency said that it has awarded Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic — a developer of space robotics technology for lunar and planetary missions — a $199.5 million contract to fly NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the South Pole of the Moon in late 2023.
Upon landing, the 1,000-pound VIPER will search for water across several miles during a 100-day mission by using four onboard instruments for sampling different soils and a drill that can bore 3 feet into the lunar surface. Collecting data on location and concentration of ice, VIPER’s mission will help create the first water resource maps of the Moon, as well as aid in selecting future landing sites for NASA’s future Artemis missions that will put humans on the Moon beginning in 2024.
And VIPER is just the latest NASA mission for Astrobotic. In May 2019, NASA awarded it a $79.5 million contract for its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to deliver 14 payloads to the Moon on Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, with that launch scheduled for June 2021 and land that July. Peregrine will carry 28 total payloads on that mission, representing eight different countries.
In July 2019, NASA awarded the company $5.6 million to prepare a much smaller MoonRanger rover — about 29 pounds — that will provide high-fidelity 3D maps of the lunar surface in areas that include polar regions and lunar pits. That mission is expected to launch in early 2022.
