NASA will pay private space companies for moon tours | Science

Next month, nearly half a century after the United States landed for the last time on a satellite, NASA is expected to announce its return. But the agency will just be there for the ride. Rather than unveiling the plans for its own spacecraft, NASA will name the private companies it will pay to conduct scientific experiments on the moon on small robotic undercarriages.

As part of a program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), NASA would buy space two or three launches a year from 2021. The effort is similar to an agency program that remunerates private companies such as Elon Musk's Space International Space Station (ISS). "It's a new way of doing business," says Sarah Noble, scientist in planetary science at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., who heads NASA's lunar plans scientific component.

Scientists are lining up for a ride. "This really looks like the future of lunar exploration," says Erica Jawin, a global scientist at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. She and other participants at the Lunar Exploration Group's annual meeting in Columbia, Maryland. Last week, they were eager to show NASA why their small experiences would be valuable hitchhikers on the undercarriages.

Several companies, including Astrobotic, Moon Express and iSpace, are trying to establish a lunar trading market. By purchasing products such as Rocket Lab, launch companies like Rocket Lab, each company hopes to become the must-have carrier of other companies seeking to scout the moon looking for rocket fuel ingredients or to collect rocks for sale . But a contract with NASA is the real price. Moon Express, for example, designed the MX-1, a landing gear of the size and shape of Star warsR2-D2. But, "we will not keep up until we know we have received an award from SPDP," said Robert Richards, managing director of Moon Express, Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Companies selected for the CLPS must deliver at least 10 kilograms of payload by the end of 2021, says NASA. It is difficult to find instruments ready to fly. "What do you have on the shelf now that you can launch the mission immediately?" Noble says. "We are looking for flight replacement parts, engineering models, student-designed projects, it's a strange call for us." The agency plans to pay up to $ 36 million to adapt eight to twelve existing scientific instruments to initial small landing gear; by the middle of the next decade, it's about building a portfolio of instruments for the biggest landing gear that can also include rovers.

The first small commercial landers will pale alongside NASA's traditional missions. Some will probably fail, as repeatedly pointed out Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's chief scientist. They will not survive the lunar night, 2 weeks when surface temperatures drop to -173 ° C. They may not be able to land at a specific location. But scientists are still enthusiastic about putting cameras and other instruments back on the surface of the moon, said Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, in Indiana. "It's a good start."

NASA is still looking for destinations for commercial landers. Earlier this year, lunar scientists compiled a list of 16 vital sites to test an emerging image of the moon, more volcanic and richer in water than previously thought. For example, 4 years ago, scientists studying Ina caldera, a collection of small smooth volcanic mounds located near the moon, noticed that it was relatively crater-free. The observation suggested that, instead of ending a billion years ago, volcanism – a sign of inner heat – persisted until a few million years ago. , smoothing the landscape. If this is true – and some dispute this conclusion – this would challenge theories about the cooling of the moon, and potentially rocky planets.

On the Aristarchus Plateau, 2 km high, scientists want to study many volcanic ash deposits, which were created during explosive eruptions caused by gases, a rarity on the moon. Thanks to its fine granularity, ashes could also be an excellent constituent of human habitats. Samples from Marius Hills, a shield volcano that has probably erupted for a considerable time, could shed some light on how water, carbon monoxide and other volatile substances in the Moon have evolved over the past decade. time. And looking inside permanently shaded craters at the moon's poles could confirm whether some of its water is frozen there, says Brett Denevi, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Laurel, Maryland.

The first small landers only allow small steps towards these scientific objectives. But the agency could possibly support commercial missions back robotic samples, which Astrobotic and Moon Express hope to offer. "They could say," I want 2 kilograms of lunar regolith from such a place, "said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Reviewed samples could help researchers with a long-term goal: date craters old and young of the Moon, which determine the age estimate of the surfaces of the solar system.

NASA also wants to bring people back to the vicinity of the moon, but in his own spaceship. He is currently building the Gateway, a small outpost that, by 2024, would host astronauts for a few months in a volume under pressure corresponding to one-tenth the size of the ISS. The gateway, which will cost NASA at least $ 3 billion for its early sections, would not gravitate around the moon but would follow a weeklong loop around a distant point of gravitational equilibrium. which is a poor advantage for lunar observations. "We are not 100% sure of its value for lunar science," said Ryan Watkins, lunar scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in St. Louis, Missouri. Noble recognizes that the gateway may be more useful for studying the sun or the rest of the universe.

Ben Bussey, NASA's chief scientist for human exploration, explains that the agency is trying to address the concerns of scientists. For example, it will be a priority to equip the station with a robotic arm, which is necessary to set up experiments outdoors. And he's studying the possibility of a reusable "tug" spacecraft that can carry landing gear, samples and instruments between the bridge and the low lunar orbit, says Bussey.

Above these lunar planes hides the fear that they will change. Congressional Republicans have proposed a return of the moon under former President George W. Bush, so that the administration of former President Barack Obama insists on visiting an asteroid in a distant space, like a springboard to Mars. Until now, the Republican-led Congress has fully funded the agency's plans: the spending bills for 2019 contain $ 500 million for the bridge and more than $ 200 million for the initial landing plans and NASA scientists. Now lunar scientists need to express their support for newly empowered Democrats, Neal says. If NASA funds some small landers and the program changes again, adds Denevi, "this will be only another lost decade."