Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLPS)

[theinternetftw]

Just noticed that Intuitive has also put out a CG video of their first mission, complete with a map of their landing site (attached).

Edit: That image complements this more zoomed-in shot from Phil that was posted a few months ago.

[theinternetftw]

NASA has now officially announced the previously mentioned VIPER rover.

(golf cart sized, 1m drill, 100 day mission, South Pole landing site, 2022 landing date).

It's to be delivered on one of the mid-sized CLPS landers to be solicited after the current on-ramp.  The on-ramp is not complete, so they must be quite confident in at least one of the contenders.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-viper-lunar-rover-to-map-water-ice-on-the-moon

[TrevorMonty]

NASA has now officially announced the previously mentioned VIPER rover.

(golf cart sized, 1m drill, 100 day mission, South Pole landing site, 2022 landing date).

It's to be delivered on one of the mid-sized CLPS landers to be solicited after the current on-ramp.  The on-ramp is not complete, so they must be quite confident in at least one of the contenders.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-viper-lunar-rover-to-map-water-ice-on-the-moon

Not stated but must have RTG to last 100 days and operate in dark craters.

If anything like Mars rovers could still be operational in 5yrs.

[Phil Stooke]

If it follows the planning for Resource Prospector, it is solar-powered and only spends short times in shadows, dipping in for an analysis and out to recharge.  The original version of the mission only lasted the 6 or 8 days when sun might be present, but later versions imagined spending a lot of time in persistently illuminated areas with short dips into shadow.  There were presentations on this at NASA Exploration Science Forum meetings for several years and at LEAG meetings.  Small heat sources are not precluded, of course.  It might have changed but if it's not stated we can't yet be sure.

[ncb1397]

NASA has now officially announced the previously mentioned VIPER rover.

(golf cart sized, 1m drill, 100 day mission, South Pole landing site, 2022 landing date).

It's to be delivered on one of the mid-sized CLPS landers to be solicited after the current on-ramp.  The on-ramp is not complete, so they must be quite confident in at least one of the contenders.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-viper-lunar-rover-to-map-water-ice-on-the-moon

Not stated but must have RTG to last 100 days and operate in dark craters.

If anything like Mars rovers could still be operational in 5yrs.

Could be RHUs like MER and Chang'e 4. Or it could be southern summer when 100 days of illumination would be pretty common geographically. MER got away with just enough plutonium to put out 8 watts while a full MMRTG puts out 2000 watts.

[theinternetftw]

Could be RHUs like MER and Chang'e 4. Or it could be southern summer when 100 days of illumination would be pretty common geographically. MER got away with just enough plutonium to put out 8 watts while a full MMRTG puts out 2000 watts.

Looks like it's the taking-advantage-of-geography option.  From the Resource Prospector thread:

There's a good article in Space News https://spacenews.com/nasa-confirms-plans-to-send-prospecting-rover-to-the-moon/ today that gives a little different info in addition to the overlap info. Apparently Bridenstine announced it during a speech at the 70th IAC on the last day of the event.

For the 100 day extended mission, a quote from the Space News article says

VIPER will take advantage of locations near the south pole that are in sunlight for most of a lunar day to enable that extended mission.

[theinternetftw]

CLPS news from the LEAG meeting (via Jeff Foust):

A look at plans for future "small delivery" task orders:

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1189195546151604225

A look at Orbit Beyond's new lander design (they pulled out of their contract due to "licensing issues" with their old design)

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1189277605477998594

[theinternetftw]

The new providers from the CLPS on-ramp will be announced Monday.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-additional-commercial-moon-delivery-providers/

[Markstark]

The new providers from the CLPS on-ramp will be announced Monday.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-additional-commercial-moon-delivery-providers/

Any guess? My money is on Blue Origin


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[pochimax]

My bet is Lockheed McCandless

[HeartofGold2030]

My bet is Lockheed McCandless

Your thinking about task orders, not companies. Lockheed have already been selected for the CLPS program, they just weren’t part of the 3 companies that won task orders to send science payloads to the Moon. Here’s a list of the current CLPS providers:

Astrobotic Technology
Deep Space Systems
Draper
Firefly Aerospace
Intuitive Machines
Lockheed Martin Space
Masten Space Systems
Moon Express
Orbit Beyond

The on-ramp will add more names to this list on Monday, specifically for delivering heavier payloads e.g. Viper.

[GWH]

Big and small landers and companies added to the list today:
 https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-companies-join-growing-ranks-of-nasa-partners-for-artemis-program

[Markstark]

Big and small landers and companies added to the list today:
 https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-companies-join-growing-ranks-of-nasa-partners-for-artemis-program

NICE!!! Blue Moon and Starship can bid for CLPS contracts now! Congrats to the other players as well.


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[whitelancer64]

Big and small landers and companies added to the list today:
 https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-companies-join-growing-ranks-of-nasa-partners-for-artemis-program

"NASA has added five American companies to the pool of vendors that will be eligible to bid on proposals to provide deliveries to the surface of the Moon through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

The additions, which increase the list of CLPS participants on contract to 14, expand NASA’s work with U.S. industry to build a strong marketplace to deliver payloads between Earth and the Moon and broaden the network of partnerships that will enable the first woman and next man to set foot on the Moon by 2024 as part of the agency’s Artemis program.

“American aerospace companies of all sizes are joining the Artemis program,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Expanding the group of companies who are eligible to bid on sending payloads to the Moon’s surface drives innovation and reduces costs to NASA and American taxpayers. We anticipate opportunities to deliver a wide range of science and technology payloads to help make our vision for lunar exploration a reality and advance our goal of sending humans to explore Mars.”

The selected companies are:

Blue Origin, Kent, Washington
Ceres Robotics, Palo Alto, California
Sierra Nevada Corporation, Louisville, Colorado
SpaceX, Hawthorne, California
Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems Inc., Irvine, California"

[theinternetftw]

Shots of all the new landers.  Yes, the pic from Ceres Robotics is very low resolution.

[theinternetftw]

Didn't get to listen to the conference today, so here's an aggregate from Eric Berger, Marcia Smith, Jeff Foust, and NASAWatch:

- Blue Origin wouldn't say if they'd use New Glenn to launch Blue Moon, or if they'd do a test flight first.  They cited a "competitive environment" as to why to be silent.  Also wouldn't answer as to what year they plan to land.

- Gwynne Shotwell said they aim to land in 2022.  Idea is to fly lots of times before a human landing.

- Accepted five proposals from a total of eight available.

- Next task order will be released "some time soon" (tm).

[su27k]

For the two relatively unknown companies, Tyvak seems to have a long experience in building nanosat and smallsats, several SBIR awards with NASA and DoD, and recently a team member in NASA CAPSTONE program which will send a 12U cubesat to gateway orbit.

Not much from Ceres Robotics, founded by JPL veteran in 2017, the only thing known is that they were part of the OrbitBeyond team, responsible for surface operations. Seems to be a rover company, strange to see them in lander program.

On a unrelated note, does the SNC lander look like a re-purposed upper stage?

[jongoff]

For the two relatively unknown companies, Tyvak seems to have a long experience in building nanosat and smallsats, several SBIR awards with NASA and DoD, and recently a team member in NASA CAPSTONE program which will send a 12U cubesat to gateway orbit.

Yeah, Tyvak is one of the big players in nanosats and microsat buses. One of its founders was one of the three guys behind the original cubesat standard (Jordi Puig-Suari). Tyvak's parent company Terran Orbital has received a lot of venture funding from LM, and is their partner for building microsatellites for government customers.

Not much from Ceres Robotics, founded by JPL veteran in 2017, the only thing known is that they were part of the OrbitBeyond team, responsible for surface operations. Seems to be a rover company, strange to see them in lander program.

Yeah, they were in the Creative Destruction Lab business accelertor's first "space stream" alongside my company and several others. At the time they were almost entirely focused on rovers not landers. But weren't there some companies in the original CLPS 9 awardees that weren't explicitly doing their own lander?

On a unrelated note, does the SNC lander look like a re-purposed upper stage?

I was thinking the same thing. It definitely has me curious to see more.

~Jon

[theinternetftw]

A little more:

Landing years:  Ceres is "comfortably targeting" 2023.  SNC in 2022.  SpaceX in 2022.  Blue and Tyvak wouldn't say.

SNC: Multiple vehicles will be offered.  Satellite bus-based lander for small payloads.  Dream Chaser-technology-based lander for large payloads.  Maybe based on the DC cargo module, it sounded like?  The small lander will be ready first.

L2 now has a recording of the presser, for the interested.  I listened and wrote up a transcript in there as well.

But weren't there some companies in the original CLPS 9 awardees that weren't explicitly doing their own lander?

Long and storied history there.

* Firefly was originally using an Intuitive-based lander.  Now based on SpaceIL's lander.
* OrbitBeyond won a bid using the TeamIndus design.  "Licensing issues" made them withdraw the bid and is forcing a new design.
* Deep Space Systems originally bid a rover with an Intuitive-based lander.  Now doing its own lander.
* Draper is using international GLXP participant ispace for lander design.

[theinternetftw]

Found a bigger version of the Ceres rover and lander pic on a different NASA page.

The filename for the picture is "lunar_marsokhod.jpg" which looks to date back to some Ames experiments in the mid-90s with a Russian rover design.

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/newsletters/lpib/archive/lpib75/bull4.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsokhod

Attaching a pic of the Ames+Russia version for comparison.