NASA picks 3 companies to develop next Moon buggy for Artemis missions

NASA plans to use LTV for the Artemis 5 mission, and it will have to be able to handle the extreme conditions at the Moon’s South Pole. It will also need to have advanced technologies for autonomous driving, and power management along with state-of-the-art communications and navigation systems.

LTV will be crucial to a lot of mission operations because crews will use it to explore the lunar surface, collect samples and transport scientific equipment much farther they could ever do on foot, especially with bulky space suits. But since the Artemis 2 mission — which was initially supposed to launch in 2023 —still hasn’t launched, the three companies should have a fair amount of time to meet the strict technical requirements put in place by the space agency.

NASA will be buying the LTV as a service from the industry. It will award up to $4.6 billion dollar for an “indefinite-deliver/indefinite-quantity”, milestone-based LTV Services contracts with firm-fixed-price task orders. Since it is not exactly clear how much one LTV and associated services will cost, it seems that NASA is waiting for further development before deciding how many it will use.

Each of the three selected companies will start with a feasibility task order. That will be a one year-long special study that will meet agency requirements through a preliminary design maturity phase. After that, the space agency will expect to build an LTV for a demonstration mission. It will land on the Moon ahead of Artemis 5 so that the agency can validate its safety and performance.