NASA’s moonbound astronauts will be riding around in a new-era lunar rover on future Artemis missions. Just who builds the new vehicle will be chosen from among three competitors who won developmental contracts Wednesday.
The three teams each with a lead company and partners include:
—The Moon RACER, which stands for Reusable Autonomous Crewed Exploration Rover, led by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, who this past February became the first commercial company to successfully touch down on the moon. They’re partnered with AVL, Boeing, Michelin and Northrop Grumman.
—The Lunar Dawn team led by Golden, Colorado-based Lunar Outpost partnering with Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Goodyear and MDA Space.
—The FLEX rover, which stands for Flexible Logistics and Exploration, led by Hawthorne, California-based Venturi Astrolab partnering with Axiom Space and Odyssey Space Research.
Their goal is to develop a lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) to be used starting with the Artemis V mission, which is currently on NASA’s roadmap to fly in 2030.
The uncrewed Artemis I mission flew in 2022 sending the Orion capsule to the moon and back. Artemis II is slated to fly with humans around the moon but not land in 2025 while Artemis III, currently aiming for a 2026 launch, would be the first mission to return humans to the surface of the moon since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.