NASA takes steps toward building Moon Base, including discussing a “perimeter”

“What we are embarking on is extremely challenging,” Isaacman said. “We know very little about the combined 80 hours of lunar astronaut EVA time in the Apollo missions, and that was more than half a century ago.”

To that end, one of the central elements of the initial Moon Base program is the development of a Moonfall program, which will consist of three or four drones about 1 meter long, weighing 225 kilograms including propellant. García-Galán said NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is leading the development of moonfall drones, and they will be delivered to the lunar surface by Firefly Aerospace.

The goal is to get these spacecraft to the Moon before the Artemis IV lunar landing mission, scheduled no earlier than 2028, to provide high-resolution imagery of the lunar surface. García-Galán said that for most of the moon, the current imagery resolution is 1 meter, and NASA wants to improve it to 1 cm.

establish perimeter

These drones will perform multiple tasks, including searching for water ice in permanently shadowed areas, identifying areas of scientific interest, and providing detailed information about landing sites, including soil mechanics, lighting conditions, and terrain. At the end of their flight lifetime, the drones will be used to establish ranges for the Moon base.

“We’re hoping to… establish a moon base perimeter with four or three lunar drones,” García-Galán said. “We’re basically going to be able to put them on the corners of areas where we think we either have major scientific objectives, or we want to build a moon base.” In these situations, he said, retired drones could also provide a beacon with retro-reflectors, or perhaps even serve as the first lunar cell towers.