Here are startups and innovators that are part of NASA’s Artemis project, whose mission is to eventually establish permanent human settlements on the Moon.
NASA begins a $90 billion-plus program this week to send Americans to the Moon with the launch of Artemis 1, a crewless expedition with the aim of eventually establishing a permanent human presence on the lunar surface.
Each of the first four Artemis launches, spread over the next few years, is expected to include no personnel and cost more than $4 billion. NASA says it’s returning to the Moon for three main reasons: discovery, inspiration for the next generation and economic opportunity. If the Artemis program is anything like its predecessor Apollo, which the space agency discontinued in the early 1970s after putting 12 astronauts on the Moon, it will yield useful products used by Americans every day. Apollo spawned the technology underpinning GPS, telecommunications satellites, DustBusters, Lasik eye surgery, shock absorbers for buildings, wireless headsets, CAT scans and air purifiers.
Fittingly, Artemis gets its name from the Greek Moon goddess who’s the twin of Apollo. The mission will test-drive the possibility of human life not only on the Moon but on Mars, putting humanity one step closer to being a multiple-planet species, according to Marshall Smith, a former high-ranking NASA official.
“There’s a whole plethora of reasons why it makes sense to continue this journey into space,” Smith told Forbes. “We spend this money building science and technology, developing our workforce to be able to do complicated systems and build complicated systems.”
NASA can’t do it alone. The agency is working with dozens of private companies and nonprofit institutions to make returning to the Moon a reality. Here’s a sample of how a few entrepreneurs, recent startups and other innovators are pitching in.
During the last three Apollo missions, the astronauts didn’t just walk on the Moon, they drove. That’s NASA’s plan for Artemis as well, and several companies are hard at work trying to build an astronaut’s dream car. These hopefuls are competing or working alongside behemoth defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Although the rovers won’t be used until 2025 at the earliest, it takes years to get it right.
One contributor is Louisville, Colorado-based Sierra Space, which revealed plans to build an Artemis rover in April. In partnership with carmaker Nissan and aerospace engineering firm Teledyne Brown, Sierra Space hopes to contribute communications and flight software. The company, which is also developing spacecraft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, was already working on rovers before entering into the partnership.
Sierra Space was founded in 2021 by billionaires Eren and Fatih Ozmen as a subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corp. It was valued at $4.5 billion after its most recent funding round in May took in $24.3 million. The company says it’s created over 4,000 space systems and components for around 500 missions.
Another company working on a new Moon buggy is California-based startup Astrolab, founded in 2020, which is in the process of building the “Flexible Logistics and Exploration” rover, or FLEX, which is designed to transport both cargo and people and has a capacity of about 3,300 pounds — comparable to a Ford F250 pickup truck.
