Why Did Lunar Outpost Design Small Rovers for the Moon?

It’s been a long time since we’ve sent people to the Moon. The last human being set foot on our satellite in 1972. However, interest in lunar exploration has grown rapidly in recent years through NASA’s Artemis program, commercial lunar missions, and international efforts. China has successfully sent multiple robotic missions to the far side of the Moon. Despite this, no humans have visited it in decades. In spite of this, many countries are still looking up into the night sky and wonder if the Moon has more to offer. One company is working on exploring that potential in the future. Why is Lunar Outpost designing small rovers for use on the Moon?

Lunar Prospecting

While there’s no cheese on the Moon, it is rich in minerals and other materials that have applications back on Earth. Orbiters, landers, and sample-return missions have detected everything from precious metals to water and helium-3 on the satellite’s surface. Water ice is believed to be concentrated in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles. Meanwhile, helium-3 exists in relatively low concentrations but remains of scientific and potential commercial interest.

As with every other mining operation, prospecting is necessary to determine optimal mining locations. This can be difficult for human miners since the Moon has no atmosphere to support human life or mining operations.

Many of these elements exist on Earth in limited quantities. This seems to support the theory that the Moon might be a broken-off chunk of our home planet that spun off when the Earth was forming. Today, the leading explanation is the Giant Impact Hypothesis. It proposes that the Moon formed after a Mars-sized body collided with the young Earth billions of years ago. Other ideas, such as the Moon forming alongside Earth or being captured by Earth’s gravity, are now considered far less likely.

Lunar Mining Rights

Prospecting on our closest stellar neighbor doesn’t mean we can necessarily mine the Moon. Until recently, experts were unsure who might have owned the property rights to the Moon itself. As a result, until those rights are figured out, no one will be allowed to harvest the materials available on our orbiting satellite.

The Outer Space Treaty, which entered into force in 1967, regulates how we as a species can use resources that exist outside our atmosphere. In essence, it states that anyone can explore space, but no one can make a sovereign claim on any celestial body unless it benefits all nations. Although the treaty does not explicitly prohibit extracting space resources, it does prohibit nations from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies. So, no one country can mine the Moon unless the resources it gathers are used to help the entire planet.

More recently, the Artemis Accords—signed by several spacefaring nations—have provided guidelines for resource use. These align with the treaty while allowing for potential commercial extraction.

Lunar Outpost Rovers

Startup Lunar Outpost is in the midst of designing rovers they want to send to the Moon to prospect the resources that might be available on the Moon. Water, for example, could be used to support human life on the Moon. In addition, water may be electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel.

In addition to these prospecting rovers, Lunar Outpost is also one of the companies selected by NASA to help develop the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV)—a crewed rover that astronauts will drive across the Moon’s surface during future Artemis missions. The company has also developed its Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), a robotic rover designed to carry scientific payloads. This platform demonstrates technologies for future lunar exploration under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Depending on the mission, each rover will have an onboard drill for taking samples. There will be a portable mass spectrometer for examining those samples, as well as cameras. Also, LIDAR transmitters and receivers will collect data for the monitoring team back on Earth. Since these rovers are designed to be small and portable, the wire and other parts used to assemble them will need to be smaller than the ones we would find on, say, the Curiosity Rover on Mars. Wire as little as 0.004 in diameter could allow electronic components to shrink. As a result, they’ll fit inside these handheld rovers.

It might be a while before we see anyone setting up mining operations on the Moon. However, Lunar Outpost’s rovers are potentially the beginning of something amazing. The company has partnered with NASA under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Its MAPP rover has been selected for lunar missions that will test technologies and gather valuable scientific data in preparation for future human exploration.

Conclusion

Development has continued steadily over the past several years as Lunar Outpost refines its technology for upcoming lunar missions. One thing is certain: we’re getting excited about the Moon again. China’s Chang’e 4 mission successfully landed on the far side of the Moon in early 2019. The mission included a biosphere experiment where cotton seeds briefly sprouted before succumbing to the cold lunar night.

Since then, China has completed additional milestones, including returning samples from both the near side and the historic first samples from the Moon’s far side. If these efforts continue to advance, we may see humans living on the Moon in our lifetime, with NASA’s Artemis program and commercial partners like Lunar Outpost working toward a sustained human presence on the lunar surface.