BREMEN, Germany — Lunar Outpost has selected SpaceX’s Starship vehicle to deliver to the moon the Artemis lunar rover it is developing for potential use by NASA.
The Colorado company announced Nov. 21 that it signed an agreement for SpaceX to use Starship to transport the company’s Lunar Outpost Eagle rover to the moon. The companies did not disclose a schedule for the launch or other terms of the deal.
Lunar Outpost is one of three companies that won NASA contracts in April for the first phase of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) program to support the development of a rover that can be used by future Artemis missions. Each company received a one-year contract to mature the design of their rovers through a preliminary design review (PDR), and the agency will later select at least one of the companies to develop the rover.
The LTV program is structured as a services contract, with the companies responsible for delivering the rover to the moon. Those companies will then be free to use those rovers commercially when not needed by NASA.
Justin Cyrus, chief executive of Lunar Outpost, said in an interview that the company selected SpaceX after getting “great responses” from several companies. “The reason we chose Starship is their technological maturation, the pace at which they move and the quality of that organization,” he said. “It’s a vehicle that we think will be able to provide reliable landing on the lunar surface, and we know that they can get it done on the timelines we need.”
Lunar Outpost designed the rover to be compatible with as many potential landing systems as possible, although he did not disclose other vehicles his company considered alongside Starship. “We need this vehicle to be compatible with multiple different lander providers, so that way we have the optionality, that way we have flexibility, and we can evaluate technical progress over time just to make sure we can derisk our commercial case.”
Lunar Outpost is leading a team that includes Leidos, MDA Space, Goodyear and General Motors that is working on the rover. Leidos replaced Lockheed Martin in September as one of the partners on the “Lunar Dawn” team after Lunar Outpost was not able to work out an agreement on that company’s role in the project.
That team has been busy refining the design of the rover, including having NASA astronauts recently drive a prototype of the rover for human factors testing. “We learned what the astronauts really like and what we can improve upon,” Cyrus said.
The first phase of the contract will conclude in about six months with a PDR. NASA will then request proposals from Lunar Outpost and the other two awardees, Intuitive Machines and Venturi Astrolab, for the next phase to develop the rover and purchase services.
NASA officials have stated that budget limitations mean they are likely to pick only one company for that next phase, although Cyrus said he and others in industry are encouraging NASA to pick multiple companies to provide redundancy, as the agency has done in other services programs like the Human Landing System.
“NASA should pick two. Dissimilar redundancy for something this critical, I think, is the right choice,” he said.
Lunar Outpost announced Nov. 13 that it raised a Series A round, the size of which Cyrus said the company would not disclose for competitive reasons. That funding, he said, will go wards work on the Lunar Outpost Eagle.
The company, he added, plans to continue work on the rover even if not selected for the next phase of NASA’s LTV program, citing commercial interest from potential customers. “This allows us to accelerate those plans pretty drastically,” he said of the funding. “So, no matter what we’re going to be flying this vehicle on Starship.”
