Enlarge / This illustration shows Astrobotic Technology’s concept for a commercial lunar lander.
NASA
For more than three years, NASA has focused on the Artemis lunar program. The high-profile international effort, led by NASA and costing nearly $7.5 billion annually, aims to return humans to the lunar surface by the mid-2020s and establish a sustainable presence in deep space.
But in recent years, NASA has been funding a second, much smaller lunar program at 3 percent of Artemis’ cost. This is the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to use private companies to send small and medium-sized landers to the lunar surface for primarily science-based missions. Its budget is approximately $250 million per year.
The program, known as CLPS, is showing some promising signs and will be at least a few years ahead of the Artemis program. Additionally, it represents a bold new effort by NASA’s Science Division, which is seeking to leverage the burgeoning commercial spaceflight sector to radically advance science and exploration capabilities. If successful, the CLPS exploration model could be extended to Mars and beyond.
But will it succeed? We’re about to find out.
Origin of CLPS
Like the Artemis program, the origins of CLPS can be traced back to the mid-Trump administration, when White House officials tried to refocus NASA’s exploration program on the moon in 2018 after a long, high focus on Mars. The shift resonated with Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s deputy administrator for science programs, who took over in late 2016.
Since the end of the Apollo program in the 1970s, NASA has sent a handful of orbiters to the moon, but no soft landings in more than 40 years. Meanwhile, the space agency has landed six times on Mars and explored the rest of the solar system.
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“For a long time, I felt that we didn’t pay enough attention to the moon,” Zubchen said in an interview with Ars. “Every celestial body in the solar system is interesting, except the one that’s in the sky every night, which seems odd.”
Other scientists have also become very involved in lunar research, especially NASA’s interest in the potential to collect water ice at the lunar poles. Part of the commercial space industry, spurred by Google’s Lunar XPrize, is also working on innovative lander concepts. There’s another data point; NASA’s successful program of getting commercial companies to deliver food and supplies to the ISS is already working well.
Zurbuchen wondered if this public-private model could be extended to scientific missions. In other words, are commercial companies up to the task of building small landers, hiring private launch companies, and providing experiments on the lunar surface for NASA and other clients?
Zurbuchen worked with key allies within NASA, including David Schurr of the Planetary Science Division and Associate Deputy Administrator Steven Clarke, to establish the CLPS program. After selecting more than a dozen U.S. companies eligible to bid, NASA began competitively awarding contracts for lunar delivery missions worth between $80 million and $100 million in May 2019. These costs are far lower than what NASA pays as part of the traditional acquisition process.
Not all of these landers will be successful, at least initially. For a private company to build a spacecraft and lander and operate the spacecraft nearly 400,000 kilometers from Earth, it represents a huge technological leap. Zurbuchen, who uses the term “shooting” to describe this risk, has been telling policymakers that early CLPS missions have a 50-50 chance of success.
“You have to take risks,” Zurbuchen said. “If the chance of success needs to be 80%, I need to put a safety and mission assurance program on it. I don’t want to do that because then I’ll squeeze some entrepreneurial energy. I really believe that the ‘startup ecosystem is a core strength of America’ one. We are second to none. If we don’t make it part of our leadership paradigm, we’re missing out. “
