Establishing commercial markets on the moon will require thinking a little differently.
That’s DARPA’s hunch, anyway. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the research and development arm of the US Department of Defense, which has just selected 14 companies to participate in a new study to develop technological frameworks for the lunar future.
“The next decade may lead to a boom in the lunar economy,” the agency said in a statement. Reaching this goal requires looking beyond the current technical model of isolated, self-sufficient systems that must organically support all necessary resources – such as energy and communications – and toward a future framework that emphasizes integrated models of business activity.
Selected companies 10-year Lunar Architecture Capability Study (LunA-10). We will work together over seven months to design integrated, interoperable solutions for essential lunar services such as logistics, construction and communications. Importantly, the study will not fund lunar surface technology demonstrations or technology construction, and instead, think of the study as the analytical framework that will support all of this activity later in the future.
The 14 companies include major aerospace companies and smaller space startups. They are: Blue Origin, CisLunar Industries, Crescent Space Services LLC, Fibertek, Inc., Firefly Aerospace, Gitai, Helios, Honeybee Robotics, ICON, Nokia of America, Northrop Grumman, Redwire Corporation, Sierra Space, and SpaceX.
DARPA said these companies will work in a “highly collaborative environment,” designing system-level solutions for lunar services. Other services that could be explored include the use of commercial on-site resources, positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), navigation and transit, and robotics.
DARPA has not revealed what each company will focus on, but a few participants have separately published details about their contributions. For example, Firefly said it will develop a “framework for on-orbit spacecraft hubs” based on its Elytra line of spacecraft.
“Based on the capabilities of Firefly’s Elytra spacecraft, the framework will define how the spacecraft can dock together in orbit and provide on-demand services, such as refueling, delivery, transportation and deorbit,” the company said in a press release. . “The goal of this framework is to help improve on-orbit mission response times from years to days using scalable spacecraft hubs that can host and service spacecraft across cislunar space.”
Gitai’s proposal includes its Inchworm robot, equipped with changeable end-effectors and designed to handle work on the moon and space stations. Redwire’s contribution will focus on high-speed communications and PNT services, with the company noting that “a constellation of lunar-orbiting platforms providing robust services and broad lunar coverage will be an important part of the thriving commercial lunar ecosystem.”