“A large paradigm shift is coming in the next 10 years for the lunar economy,” said Dr. Michael “Orbit” Nayak, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office. “To get to a turning point faster, LunA-10 uniquely aims to identify solutions that can enable multi-mission lunar systems – imagine a wireless power station that can also provide comms and navigation in its beam. For 65 years, DARPA has pioneered and de-risked technologies vital to civil space advancement — from the rocket technology in the Saturn V that took humans to the Moon for the first time, to the recent DARPA-NASA partnership to enable faster space travel to the Moon and beyond with a nuclear thermal rocket engine. LunA-10 continues this rich legacy by identifying and accelerating key technologies that may be used by government and the commercial space industry, and ultimately to catalyze economic vibrancy on the Moon.”
