November 2021: Recap

Casio and Michelin join the ranks of lunar industry. A treasure map on the Moon.

Dec 01, 2021

My apologies for skipping last month’s newsletter. In this edition, I’ve combined October and November’s news into one.

Image: Concept image of a lunar motorcycle, “Tardigrade”. Credit: J.Konrad Schmidt/Hookie/Cover-Im.

Industry News

Casio, the Japanese electronics company whose products include calculators, digital cameras and watches, will conduct an experiment next month with Japan’s space agency, JAXA, involving the application of its high-precision positioning system to support lunar rovers with the construction of a base on the Moon. To study the viability of its technology for this use, Casio will install an industrial camera on an automatically guided tractor to capture communication signals transmitted from multiple LED lights.1 2
NASA awarded Intuitive Machines $77.5 million to deliver 203 pounds (92 kg) of payloads to the lunar surface in 2024.3 This is the third task order that NASA has awarded to the Houston-based company as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, totaling over $200 million. The company’s first two missions are currently scheduled for Q1 and Q4 2022.
Michelin, the French tire manufacturing company, has teamed up with Northrop Grumman and Intuitive Machines to design a lunar rover, which it intends to pitch to NASA in an upcoming competitive bid. Michelin has worked with NASA before on tires for previous lunar rovers. NASA anticipates launching the winning vehicle to the Moon around 2027.4 (Note: I previously reported on collaborations between Bridgestone and Toyota and also between General Motors and Lockheed Martin on lunar vehicle designs.)
Intel - or more specifically, a group of Intel employees known as Intel AI Mentors - conducted a joint study with Frontier Development Lab to better understand the physiological effects of radiation exposure on astronauts with an eye on protecting lunar astronauts as we return to the Moon.5
Plus Ultra, a Spanish-German company aiming to construct essential lunar communications and navigation infrastructure, secured an agreement to launch its first lunar satellite in Q4 2023.6
Hookie, a German motorcycle design company, developed a stunning prototype of a lightweight electric lunar motorcycle called “Tardigrade”.7
Rocket Lab posted photos on its Twitter of the latest progress of its Photon spacecraft, which is targeting a March 20228 launch to the Moon. Check out this gorgeous lunar spacecraft below.

Image: Rocket Lab’s “Photon” lunar satellite bus. Credit: Rocket Lab.

Government News

NASA’s 2024 target to puts humans back on the Moon looks like it may slip to 2026, or later.9 10
China’s senior lunar program designer said, “a Chinese crewed moon landing is entirely possible by 2030.”11 Also, last month, China’s “Yutu 2” rover hit a milestone of 1,000 days exploring the surface of the far side of the Moon.12
Russia is targeting May or July 2022 to put a spacecraft on the Moon. That mission, Luna-25, is to be followed by Luna-26 in 2024, Luna-27 in 2025, and Luna-28 in 2027-2028.13 The head of Russia’s space agency said he expects Luna-27 to be a “full-fledged international project” and said the agency is in discussion with French specialists on water ice treatment technologies.14
Poland became the 13th country to join the Artemis Accords, an international agreement among governments participating in the Artemis lunar program.15
UAE and Israel will collaborate on a lunar mission is targeting launch in 2024 to be coordinated by Israeli non-governmental organization SpaceIL.16
Japan is recruiting astronauts for lunar missions. A first for any government space agency, JAXA has dropped academic requirement for recruits.17
Australia plans to work with a consortium of businesses and research organizations to send a lunar rover to the Moon as early as 2026.18 19
Turkey has began conducting tests on its lunar spacecraft, which is targeting a 2028 landing and rover deployment on the Moon’s surface.

Yutu-2 Rover in High Resolution | The Planetary Society — Image: China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover on the far side of the Moon. Credit: CNSA.

Spotlight: Lunar Resources

This month, a soil researcher of Southern Cross University, John Grant, estimated that just the top layer of the Moon’s regolith may contain enough oxygen for 8 billion people to survive for about 100,000 years.20 (The current population of Earth is 7.9 billion as of November 2021, according to the most recent UN estimates.)

Once extracted, that oxygen can be used to sustain human life, but it can also be used for rocket propellant, supplying spaceships en route to Mars and beyond, as well as resupplying other satellites and vehicles operating in the zone between the Earth and the Moon—whats called “cislunar” space—effectively establishing the Moon as both a waypoint and gas station to support deep space exploration.

What’s more, another study published this month claims that there’s a high likelihood that an abundance of carbon dioxide in high concentrations are frozen in cold traps around the Moon’s poles.21 22 While this could also be converted to both breathable oxygen and rocket fuel, carbon is an essential element that can also be useful for everything from the production of building materials and biomaterial.

Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done to develop and deliver the technologies, equipment and processes to effectively extract these resources from the Moon, as well as to respond to the tremendous energy requirements. However, work is already underway to address these issues. NASA is collaborating with private companies and researchers around the world to send rovers to the Moon in the coming years to collect, analyze and study extractions methods for lunar resources.

With regard to anticipated electricity demands on the Moon, NASA and the Department of Energy this month called for American companies to submit design concepts to put nuclear fission reactors on the Moon within 10 years.23 The request is for the fission systems to eventually be capable of producing at least 40 kilowatts of energy, enough to power approximately 30 households for up to 10 years.