WASHINGTON — Lunar lander companies want NASA to revise and expand its approach to buy services from them as members of Congress raise questions about NASA’s handling of a lunar rover mission.
At an April 1 hearing of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, executives of the three companies that have attempted landings so far as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program advocated for changes such as larger landers and block buys of missions.
“NASA’s CLPS model was the catalyst to our success,” Jason Kim, chief executive of Firefly Aerospace, said at the hearing. His company’s Blue Ghost 1 lander touched down on the moon a month ago. “Together, we maximized efficiency in cost and schedule while minimizing risk to the taxpayer.”
He called for “stable, multi-year funding commitments” for CLPS to enable a steady cadence of two to three missions per year, while also enhancing the supply chain needed for such spacecraft. He also recommended investments in spacecraft testing facilities and communications services to support lunar missions.
Companies are also thinking ahead to a second round of the CLPS program, dubbed CLPS 2.0, once the original CLPS contracts expire in 2028.
“Now is an excellent time to consider what a CLPS 2.0 initiative should look like,” said John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, whose Peregrine lunar lander suffered a propulsion malfunction just after its January 2024 launch, preventing a landing attempt.
He recommended NASA pursue block buys of landers from companies already working on CLPS missions. “This will enable U.S. lander providers to buy in bulk from their U.S. supply chains and save CLPS money,” he said.
Steve Altemus, president and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, also endorsed block buys of landers in CLPS 2.0. His company has landed two spacecraft on the moon, although both fell on their side, reducing the data the payloads on board could return.
He called for expanding CLPS to include delivering infrastructure to the moon and allow other government agencies to order missions from it. “Expanding contracts to serve multiple agencies, such as national security and intelligence, could maximize efficiency, reduce cost and enhance innovation through shared investments and multiuse capabilities,” he said.
VIPER concerns
Members of the committee, while generally supportive of CLPS overall, questioned NASA’s handling of one mission that was to use a CLPS lander. NASA announced in July it was canceling the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission, a lunar rover that was going to be delivered on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. It has subsequently offered the completed rover to companies to fly it to the moon at their own expense.
One lunar scientist at the hearing was skeptical of that approach. “We should not expect VIPER science to happen by hoping that someone will offer to fly and operate it on their own dime,” said Brett Denevi, a principal staff scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. “Without congressional action to restore VIPER, it is likely that China will make the first landed measurements of ice on the moon and test methods for lunar resource utilization.”
Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, defended the agency’s decision to cancel VIPER. “We did not have the budget to be able to support VIPER moving forward,” she said. “It would have affected many future CLPS landers.” NASA, in a response to a letter from the committee about the decision last fall, said it would have had to cancel or delay several other CLPS missions to keep VIPER going.
“I was not satisfied with the answers that we got,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member of the full committee, said at the hearing, referring to that earlier letter. “Certainly, the project was terminated after it was complete.”
Fox argued that VIPER was not complete at the time of the decision because of testing that was still underway at the time.
Denevi said she hoped that Congress could, at a minimum, fund existing NASA science and operations teams for VIPER, which are at risk of being disbanded even if NASA selects a company to fly the rover. “There are teams that have been working incredibly hard to learn how to develop the software, operate and calibrate all the instruments, so they can get the most science return for those,” she said.
“In terms of how it is delivered to the moon itself, I leave that to NASA’s decisions there,” she added. “I think the science team understands that, with high risk and high reward, we want to make sure it’s a balance, but still moving forward so that we have a chance to get to that rewarding science and exploration data.”