NASA To Study Surface Of The Moon

Private companies are being invited by NASA to share their ideas for instruments that can be used to explore the surface of the Moon. The space agency recently put out a formal Request for Information that is seeking for concepts of small science payloads that can be sent to the Moon between 2017-2020.

In its RFI as cited by The Verge, NASA wrote, "Multiple US companies are developing robotic lunar landing capabilities and have expressed plans to provide commercial cargo delivery services to the Moon in the near future." It went on, "Information on lunar payloads that could be launched as early as 2017 would be valuable to NASA as it works to understand the potential role of the Moon in future exploration activities."

This request is the first since 2010 that the organization showed desire to send hardware up to the Moon, as it had been adamant on putting humans on Mars instead. However, it seems that they have been looking at the Moon again, viewing it as a potential stepping stone for the Red Planet.

Today, NASA said that it wants to understand the Moon's environment, to understand whether or not it can be a stepping stone for human exploration - and if it has resources that could be exploited for space travel, such as water that could be used to fuel future spacecraft. William Gerstenmaier, an associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA said that there is more that we need to learn about our satellite.

NASA is currently only soliciting ideas, and funding for any payload is not yet provided. However, due to project constraints, Space News noted that if they are in fact providing funding in the future, they will do so with the expectation of sharing costs for developing said instruments with the organization providing and developing the idea.