NASA is taking yet another major step towards encouraging private moon exploration. And its strategy involves owning the moon, at least some parts of it.
The space agency, which has already booked robotic rides on commercial landers to the surface of the moon and is planning to do the same with crewed missions, now intends to pay private companies to collect moon resources.
"The bottom line is, we're gonna buy some lunar soil for the purpose of demonstrating that it can be done," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said.
To that purpose, NASA has just released a Request for Proposals (RFP), Bridenstine explained in a blog post. NASA encourages private businesses, both in the United States and abroad, to grab 1.8 ounces to 18 ounces of moon material by 2024 and formally pass ownership of the material to the space agency on the surface of the moon.
On any of these caches, NASA would pay $15,000 to $25,000, with 80% of the money being delivered after sample processing. After signing a deal, corporations can get 10% and another 10% after deploying their spacecraft, Bridenstine said.
Eventually, NASA will pull down the lunar material to Earth, if everything goes according to schedule. (Here, of course, the space agency still has a large cache of moon rocks. Apollo explorers took home 842 lbs or 382 kg of lunar material between 1969 and 1972.)
Bridenstine said the key aim of the existing RFP, which you will find here, is to promote and normalize the production and selling of lunar resources. Participating businesses can opt, for example, to collect much more than 18 ounces of material and market the surplus to customers outside of NASA.
Right now, NASA is attempting to prove the idea of collecting minerals, and they can be sold, Bridenstine said. And not only traded among businesses or private individuals, but also across countries and through borders, and other nations' private individuals.
NASA plans to continue supporting those ventures in the future, he said, with other variations of the RFP. All such operations, Bridenstine insisted, will be carried out in conjunction with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which is the backbone of international space legislation.
Using lunar resources is crucial to creating a permanent human footprint on and around the moon, a target NASA strives to accomplish with its crewed exploration program Artemis by the late 2020s. This lunar research, NASA officials said, would help the agency plan for crewed trips to Mars in the 2030s.
