The American space agency launched on Thursday an unprecedented call for tenders: it wants to pay companies to go and take samples of lunar rocks, as part of the American strategy to develop the capacities of exploitation of extraterrestrial mineral resources.
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“NASA is looking to buy lunar soil from commercial suppliers!” Tweeted NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
The United States intends to be a leader in the exploitation of resources in the ground or subsoil of asteroids and the Moon, a policy encouraged by an executive order from President Donald Trump last April, despite a lack of international consensus and case law on how best to manage and share extraterrestrial resources. The major space treatises are vague on the question.
Companies are called upon to present their proposals to collect a “small” sample of moonstones or regolith, the kind of sand or dust that covers the surface of the moon, anywhere on the star. The tender specifies between 50 and 500 grams.
A transfer of ownership will then occur for NASA, which would become the “sole” owner. 80% of the amount of the contract will be paid when this operation, documented by images, is carried out.
Deadline: “before 2024”
Initially, the contract will consist only of taking samples, which will remain on the moon, the space agency seeming above all keen to prove the technology. The future use of these stones has not been specified.
“The agency will determine the method of recovering the transferred lunar regolith at a later date,” said NASA.
It is a new economic model chosen more and more by the space agency, which consists of no longer assuming all of the development and operational costs of a mission, but of awarding service contracts to space companies. private, as it has successfully done with SpaceX, which now carries cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.