It was shaping up into another ordinary day at the Colorado headquarters of the small space startup Lunar Outpost last Friday when chief executive Justin Cyrus learned of a surprise press conference called by Jared Isaacman, the new administrator of Nasa.
Cyrus’s company epitomises the many private contractors of the space agency working on a myriad of projects crucial to the Artemis program that seeks to return humans to the moon, so anything Isaacman had to say about it was naturally of interest to him.
What he didn’t expect was the stunning announcement that Nasa was restructuring its entire strategy for the first human lunar landing in more than half a century, and was moving its astronauts to a later, scheduled 2028 launch attempt on Artemis IV.
Beset by technical issues that put the Artemis program billions of dollars over-budget and years behind schedule, as well as criticism that the agency was trying to do too much too soon, Nasa made a decision with significant consequences for its many commercial partners such as Lunar Outpost, and in the process created many more questions.
But in the best traditions of decades of challenging human spaceflight, Cyrus saw opportunity from adversity.
Barring further delays or rethinking by Nasa’s senior managers, the company’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (Mapp) rover, a small but mighty technology-packed vehicle crucial to the agency’s plans for future long-term habitation on the moon, will now journey alongside the Artemis IV astronauts.
“Humans will be back on the moon for the first time in over 50 years and one of our rovers will be alongside, which is a pretty awesome feeling,” he said.
“For us, selfishly, that’s a pretty exciting prospect. The broader announcement I’m 100% on board with, higher cadence, more missions going to the moon. It’s fantastic Nasa has concrete plans on how they can accelerate things, and that opens up what we are doing in the background.
“At the end of the day, rovers and robotic systems are critical to permanence on the moon. With Mapp, we are full steam ahead, the hardware’s been done for a long time, there’s a few checkouts that still need to be done for the electrical power system between the lander and the rover, and some software integration, but once that is complete, we’re off to the moon.”
Lunar Outpost’s story is typical of young companies that have carved out an important role for themselves in a new era of public-private partnership in space, as well as experiencing – just like Nasa itself – the obstacles and frustrations of the industry.
Founded by Cyrus, an aerospace veteran, and two friends in 2017, it has ambitious plans to construct and fly a number of rovers, of varying sizes and capabilities, for Nasa’s use on the moon, and eventually Mars.
Its largest project, the in-development Eagle lunar terrain vehicle (LTV), is billed as “the most capable crewed and cargo transport ever built” for human spaceflight, and a full-size prototype impressed crowds at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center visitor center last year.
