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NASA has just bought the rights to four future lots moon samples for the low and low price of $ 25,001.
The space agency has signed deals with four companies that will collect moon rock and dirt over the next few years and then hand the material to NASA. The contracts are designed to kick-start the extraction, sale and use of extra-terrestrial resources, which agency officials stress as critical to extending humanity’s footprint to the final frontier.
“We believe it is very important to set the precedent that private sector entities can mine, can take these resources, and NASA can purchase and use them to power not just NASA’s operations, but a whole new dynamic era of public and private development. exploration to the moon and then eventually Mars, “Mike Gold, NASA’s associate administrator for international relations and inter-agency, told reporters during a conference call today (Dec 3).
Related: The plate full of NASA’s moon missions before the astronauts can leave
NASA has not yet planned the recovery of the collected samples and it is unclear whether the material will be brought to Earth, agency officials said. (NASA already has many moon rocks here; the Apollo missions transported 842 pounds, or 342 kilograms, of lunar material home between 1969 and 1972.)
The four companies and their awarded contracts are Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California ($ 15,000); ispace Europe of Luxembourg ($ 5,000); ispace Japan of Tokyo ($ 5,000); and Colorado-based Lunar Outpost ($ 1).
Funding is so low because NASA is paying exclusively for the material collected, without footing the bill for any of the companies’ development costs, agency officials said.
Masten, ispace Europe and Lunar Outpost plan to collect their samples from the lunar south pole region, where the three companies aim to land in 2023. Masten will use its XL-1 lander, ispace Europe will rely on its Hakuto- R and The Lunar Outpost robot will apparently make a pass over the lunar surface aboard Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, NASA officials said today.
Hakuto-R is also the lander of choice for ispace Japan, which will collect samples from Lacus Somniorum, a site on the northeastern side near the moon, following a planned landing there in 2022.
Each set of entangled samples will weigh between 1.8 and 18 ounces (50 to 500 grams), according to a request for proposals that NASA was released in September. The four companies will provide images of the samples as well as data identifying where they were collected.
“Upon receipt of these images and data, an” on-site “transfer of ownership of the lunar regolith to NASA will take place,” agency officials wrote in a statement today. “After the transfer of ownership, the collected material becomes the exclusive property of NASA for use by the agency under the Artemis program.”
Artemis is NASA’s ambitious manned lunar exploration program, which aims to land two astronauts near the South Pole in 2024 and establish a long-term sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028.
The newly announced contracts strengthen Artemis’ ties with international and private sector partners, which were already substantial. For example, NASA will rely on private landers to put Artemis’ astronauts on the moon in 2024 and beyond, and to haul robotic loads to the lunar surface before those manned landmarks.
NASA has also begun to put together an international coalition for the exploration of the moon, formalized through a set of principles known as Arrangements of Artemis. Nine nations have signed the agreements to date, paving the way for them to participate in the Artemis program. Japan and Luxembourg are among the signatories, although ispace Japan and ispace Europe could still have benefited from the new NASA contracts even if their home nations had not signed, agency officials said today.
NASA received 22 proposals in response to the September request, agency officials said. Fourteen of the 22 were deemed “unacceptable” for technical or cost reasons, leaving a pool of eight eligible finalists which was screened to four winners.
NASA will pay each selected company 10% of the award upon signing, 10% upon launch, and 80% when the collected sample is officially transferred to NASA. Then Lunar Outpost will receive two checks for 10 cents each and a third for 80 cents.
NASA officials stressed that upcoming activities will be conducted in accordance with the Treatise on outer space (OST), the 1967 document which forms the basis of international space law. The OST prohibits nations from claiming sovereignty over territory outside the Earth but, say most exploration experts and advocates, it does not use and sale of cosmic resources.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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