NASA faces a quandary with its audacious lunar cargo program

Most of NASA is a pretty buttoned-down place these days. Nearly 70 years old, the space agency is no longer the rambunctious adolescent it was during the race to the Moon in the 1960s. If you go to a NASA field center today, you're much more likely to get dragged into a meeting or a review than witness a rocket engine test.

One way to describe the space agency today is "risk averse." Some of this, certainly, is understandable. NASA is where flight director Gene Kranz famously said during the Apollo 13 rescue, "Failure is not an option." Moreover, after three major accidents that resulted in the death of 17 astronauts—Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia—NASA takes every conceivable precaution to avoid similar tragedies in the future.

But there does come a point where NASA becomes so risk averse that it no longer takes bold and giant steps, succumbing to paralysis by analysis. As one long-time NASA engineer told me several years ago, only partly tongue-in-cheek, it took a minor miracle for engineers designing the Orion spacecraft to get a small window on the vehicle through the rigorous safety review process.

Happily, however, there are still corners of the space agency where the mad scientists are free to play. One of these is in the science "directorate" of NASA, where about seven years ago, a handful of scientists and engineers were trying to figure out a way to get some experiments to the Moon without busting their limited budget. Flying a phalanx of such missions the old way would have cost billions of dollars. They didn't have that kind of money, nor all the time in the world.

These scientists, including the leader of the directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen, knew that the Moon was about to become a red-hot target for exploration.

Back to the Moon

For decades after Apollo, NASA had basically ignored the Moon. It was, as Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin said, magnificent but desolate. The space agency turned its robotic exploration efforts to Mars and beyond, and its human program remained in low-Earth orbit. The Moon? It was cold and gray, dry and airless.

But by the mid-2010s, Zurbuchen and other scientists were increasingly convinced that there were deposits of water ice at the lunar poles in permanently shadowed craters. Moreover, NASA's human exploration program was finally getting serious about going back into deep space, and it was clear that the Moon would be the first stop. Finally, there was a sense of urgency as China started to land rovers on the Moon and set out plans to build a lunar base near the South Pole.

So NASA's scientists knew they wanted to get experiments, rovers, and other things to the Moon—nothing too massive, mostly payloads from a few dozen to a few hundred kilograms—to reassess the lunar surface and determine what resources were there and how we might get at them. The idea was to do cool science but also prepare the way and support human activity on the Moon. But NASA's science division didn't have billions of dollars to throw at a lunar program like the human exploration division.

So Zurbuchen and his team faced a choice. They could save up for a handful of big, expensive missions flown by traditional contractors. Or they could try something new.

The commercial space industry, spurred in part by the Google Lunar xPrize that was never won, was starting to make some noise about developing small lunar landers. Could NASA provide some incentives for a few of these companies to finish their landers and deliver experiments to the Moon?

At a cost of a few hundred million dollars a year, such a commercial plan made some sense. But there were risks. Getting into space was hard enough. Actually landing on the Moon? That's very hard. A lander must be powered all the way down to the surface since there is no atmosphere for braking, and due to a lag in communications, it must be done autonomously. And, oh yeah, there are boulders and craters all over the Moon, so your lander had better have a smart navigation system on board.

Zurbuchen knew this would be risky and that NASA would have to accept some failures. Private companies, doing this for less money, would have to shed much of NASA's rigorous safety procedures. To help his administrators understand what he and the commercial companies wanted to do, Zurbuchen used the phrase "shots on goal" to describe the plan.

He knew the private companies would miss some shots.

Meet CLPS

Most Americans have never heard of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. (It's a clunky name, so space nerds generally refer to it by CLPS, pronounced "clips.") But that's starting to change now that companies are putting their landers into space.

NASA first asked the industry who would be interested in bidding on Moon missions in 2018, and a year later, the space agency announced its first awardees. A Pittsburgh-based startup, Astrobotic, won $79.5 million; Houston-based Intuitive Machines won $77 million, and Orbit Beyond won $97 million. Launches were intended to occur by 2020.

But pretty quickly, it became clear that the companies wouldn't make that deadline. While they made credible technical progress, they also had setbacks. Astrobotic had propulsion problems. Intuitive Machines accidentally blew up a propellant tank during testing. And in 2020, Orbit Beyond waved the red flag and dropped out of its contract award, saying it could not complete the task. The pandemic compounded each company's woes, slowing down work and impacting the aerospace industry supply chain.

Beyond the technical challenges, a bigger issue was finances. To win NASA contracts, the companies bid lower amounts. They hoped to recoup some of their costs by selling some of the payload space on their landers to commercial customers. And they did sell some slots, but building Moon landers turns out to be pretty expensive. NASA found ways to help where it could. By asking Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines to change their landing sites to more interesting (and challenging to reach) locations on the Moon, NASA officials managed to add a few tens of millions of dollars to these otherwise fixed-price contracts. Still, the companies were cash-strapped.

Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines finally completed their vehicles simultaneously in late 2023. Due to the vagaries of launch and other external factories, Astrobotic's Peregrine lander flew first, on a Vulcan rocket on January 8. Shortly after separating from the Vulcan rocket, however, Peregrine sustained a serious blow when one of its propulsion tanks ruptured. At NASA's request, Astrobotic sent its spacecraft plunging back into Earth's atmosphere so it could be disposed of safely.

Will VIPER be predator or prey?

Although Astrobotic won plaudits for its transparent communication during the mission, this failure raises a significant quandary for NASA. Peregrine was supposed to be a pathfinder for the company, testing procedures and software for landing on the lunar surface. But because the spacecraft never got close to the lunar surface, it's unclear whether Astrobotic's landing technology works.

That's a big problem because the company's next mission entails flying the significantly larger and more complex Griffin lander. The first Griffin flight is supposed to deliver NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the Nobile crater near the South Pole of the Moon. This is a rather significant payload that cost NASA more than $400 million to develop. (In addition, Astrobotic received a $199.5 million contract to deliver the rover).

The agency has previously resisted pressure to move the lander's delivery to a more traditional contracting method. But what will happen now that Peregrine has failed? I think it's likely that NASA will want to see Griffin fly at least once before risking the VIPER mission on Griffin for its debut flight. NASA is probably also studying alternative options for delivery, including a more traditional procurement or possibly working with the Indian government.

Whatever NASA decides, it will be telling about the extent of the space agency's confidence in its commercial lunar partners.

With Astrobotic's first mission over, the focus has now turned to Intuitive Machines. The company's Odysseus lander launched last week on a Falcon 9 rocket, and if all goes well, it will attempt to land on the Moon on Thursday at around 5 pm ET (23:00 UTC). It would go a long way toward showing the viability of the CLPS program if Odysseus could stick the landing. But this is no sure thing.

Including Astrobotic, there have been three non-governmental missions flown to date that have attempted to land on the Moon. The others, Israel-based SpaceIL’s Beresheet and ispace Japan’s Hakuto-R, also failed. To date, then, the private companies are batting 0.000.

Will anyone survive?

If I haven't been clear until now, let me be so before continuing. I think CLPS is a daring program—exactly the type of risk-taking that NASA should be following in non-critical missions outside of human spaceflight. If CLPS works, in a few years, the space agency will have laid the foundation for a highway to the Moon. US companies could provide rapid, regular transport to the Moon for pennies on the dollar of what the agency would have been charged for highly specialized, one-off missions in the past.

In short, if we're ever to expand the sphere of human activity to the Moon, we really need programs like CLPS to succeed. For that reason I, and many other people who dream of a vibrant future for humanity in space, are rooting like hell for its success.

At the same time, many of us worry about whether it will survive.

First of all, Astrobotic's failure is concerning. If Intuitive Machines also fails, it's not difficult to envision key members of Congress asking why NASA is spending all of this money on commercial landers. (To date, NASA has eight CLPS missions on contract with various providers: Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, Draper Laboratory, and Firefly Aerospace. The total value is more than $1 billion). Some of these Congressional members would be happy to shut down the commercial program and reward the traditional contractors who contribute to their campaigns.

There are also valid questions about how big of a "commercial" market there is for these services. There are some nifty private payloads on these early CLPS missions, but they mostly seem to be one-off exhibitions. There is no clear signal yet that long-term industrial customers will be signing up for these missions. For the time being, NASA is paying most of the freight.

Finally, there are financial concerns.

Intuitive Machines is a publicly traded company. Like a slew of other new space firms, it went public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, for an infusion of cash. Also like a lot of other new space companies, its revenues have lagged expenses. In its most recent financial statement, Intuitive Machines reported $40.7 million in cash and cash equivalents. This is balanced against operating losses, through the first three quarters of 2023, of $50.3 million. There is plenty of chatter in the industry about how the other lander companies are struggling financially as well. Regarding cash flow, they seem to be living hand to mouth.

What it will take to survive

Representatives of Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, Firefly, and Draper all appeared on stage last week together during a panel discussion at the ASCENDxTexas conference. Toward the end, a NASA official, Jennifer Lopez, asked each company representative what the space agency could do to support their efforts further and help ignite commercial activity on the Moon.

The answers were insightful—in the sense of what NASA could do to help and about the challenges the companies face.

Lindsay Papsidero, senior director of civil and commercial space at Astrobotic, said the companies need help with long-term planning and financial stability. "The thing that would make all of the businesses healthy is block buys," she said. "If we could offer commercial customers a regular schedule. It could become a trains-leaving-the-station-type approach."

In a block buy, NASA would contract with one or more companies to provide a certain number of missions, perhaps six or eight, well in advance. This would allow the lander companies to be more efficient in allocating capital and hiring employees. There is also precedent for it, as NASA used this approach to buy cargo launches to the International Space Station from SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. About 50 commercial cargo missions have launched during the last 11 years under this program. Such block buys, of course, would represent a significant financial commitment from NASA.

A senior official from Intuitive Machines, Bob Pavelko, said NASA should continue planning for and developing infrastructure to support extended activities on the lunar surface. This includes communications, navigation, and power from either fission reactors or large solar arrays. "These services are required to sustain commercial activity," he said.

And a program manager for space systems at Draper, Chris Boger, said NASA needs to remain supportive of the CLPS program despite its propensity for early failures. The companies involved, he said, have put many years and many millions of dollars into reaching the point of starting to launch landers to the Moon. The expectation is that NASA will stay strong and continue to support this emerging marketplace.

"We've invested a lot to get here, and we're close," Boger said. "NASA should stay focused and stay committed to seeing this through."

That task would probably be a lot easier if Odysseus sticks the landing on Thursday.