The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected 14 companies to participate in its Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study that will aims toward setting up a civil lunar framework for peaceful international use.
The project encompasses a 10-year goal of studying the rapid development of interconnected and scalable technology systems focused on creating monetized services for future lunar users.
“LunA-10 has the potential to upend how the civil space community thinks about spurring widespread commercial activity on and around the Moon within the next 10 years,” said Dr. Micheal Nayak, program manager at DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office.
According to the contract opportunity, companies will be “create new benchmarks and metrics defining performance parameters for each integrated system solution, directly tied to an aggregate ‘critical mass’ for a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure.”
“LunA-10 performers include companies both big and small, domestic and international, each of which brought a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure. We’re excited to get started and to share results with the lunar community at large,” added Dr. Nayak.
Companies selected for the study include:
- 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
- SpaceX
