NASA officials announced contract awards for the initial elements of a lunar base on Tuesday, including two rovers that will provide mobility to astronauts.

With the series of announcements, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sought to maintain momentum around a Moon Base initiative revealed two months ago as part of the space agency’s return to the Moon. “For those waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand, and we will not slow down,” he said.

The manager for the lunar base, Carlos Garcia-Galan, said the space agency had selected two companies, Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, to build approximately 1-ton rovers that would be ready for delivery to the Moon in 2028. Astrolab will receive $219 million for its “CLV-1” rover, and Lunar Outpost $220 million for its “Pegasus” rover, building upon initial contracts awarded two years ago. Each rover is expected to have a range of 200 km and be capable of driving autonomously, with guidance from operators on Earth, in addition to being driven by astronauts.

Garcia-Galan also announced that Blue Origin, with its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, would deliver each of the rovers separately to the lunar surface. These two delivery contract awards were worth $280.4 million.

The awards increase Blue Origin’s centrality to NASA’s Moon plans, both by flying large amounts of cargo, with a Mark 1 lander previously contracted to deliver the Viper vehicle to the lunar surface, and by supporting the company’s larger Mark 2 lander for eventual human missions.

Need to learn more about the lunar surface

One theme of Tuesday’s news conference was the reality that, decades after humanity’s first visits to the Moon, there remains much we do not know about conditions on the lunar surface.

“What we are embarking upon is extremely challenging,” Isaacman said. “We know so little from what is a combined 80 hours of lunar astronaut EVA time across the Apollo missions, and that was more than a half century ago.”

To that end, one of the central elements of the early Moon Base program is the development of the MoonFall program, which will entail three or four drones each about 1 meter tall, with a mass of 225 kg, including propellant. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is leading development of the MoonFall drones, and these will be delivered to the lunar surface by Firefly Aerospace, Garcia-Galan said.

The goal is to get these spacecraft to the Moon before the Artemis IV lunar landing mission, scheduled for no earlier than 2028, to provide high-resolution imagery of the lunar surface. For most of the Moon, the current imagery resolution is 1 meter, and NASA wants to improve it to 1 cm, Garcia-Galan said.

Establishing a perimeter

These drones will perform a number of functions, including scouting for water ice in permanently shadowed regions, identifying areas of scientific interest, and providing detailed information about landing sites, including soil mechanics, lighting conditions, and the terrain. At the end of their flying lifetime, the drones would then be used to set a boundary for the Moon Base.

“We’re hoping to… establish a Moon Base perimeter with four or three lunar drones,” Garcia-Galan said. “We’re going to be able to basically put them at the corners of the areas where we think we have either key scientific objectives, or we want to build up the Moon Base.” In these positions, he added, the retired drones could also provide a beacon with retro-reflectors, or even perhaps serve as the first lunar cell towers.

The idea of a perimeter raises interesting questions about territory on the Moon.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, agreed to by all spacefaring nations, essentially says no country can claim sovereignty over territory on the Moon. Even building a base on the lunar surface does not confer ownership of that area under the treaty.

“Mindful” of the Outer Space Treaty

NASA and 66 other nations have, to date, signed on to the Artemis Accords as a framework for exploring and developing the lunar surface this century. This NASA-led Artemis group is in direct competition with a China-led initiative that also intends to explore the Moon’s south pole and potentially extract resources there.

The Artemis Accords, while recognizing the Outer Space Treaty, allow for the possibility of creating “safety zones” that would establish areas in which “harmful interference” is not allowed. “A safety zone should be the area in which nominal operations of a relevant activity or an anomalous event could reasonably cause harmful interference,” the Artemis Accords state. NASA and China have not formally discussed or mutually approved the concept of safety zones, and some Chinese commentators have been critical of the idea.

Establishing a perimeter would seem to be the first manifestation of a safety zone on the lunar surface, although Isaacman would not confirm this when asked directly.

“There are areas of great interest on the lunar surface, and we do want to get there and explore them,” he said. “We also obviously want to be very mindful of the Outer Space Treaty, so that we are respectful of other nations that are putting assets on the lunar surface. We would expect that to be reciprocal, but I think that’s just one objective of many that the MoonFall drones intend to accomplish.”