WASHINGTON — NASA has delayed the award of contracts to develop a lunar rover for future Artemis missions by 4 months, raising concerns in industry concerning the way forward for this system.
NASA had intended to make an award for the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) services contract in November. In a final request for proposals issued May 26, NASA said it expected to make a number of awards on Nov. 27. On the time it issued the request for proposals, those proposals were due July 13, a date later shifted to July 26.
Nevertheless, in recent weeks NASA modified the expected contract award to March 31, 2024. That change, made on a procurement website, didn’t disclose the rationale for the four-month delay.
A NASA spokesperson said Oct. 30 that that the agency delayed the award “to permit additional time to judge proposals” but didn’t elaborate.
Industry officials, speaking on background due to the continued procurement, speculated that the delay could also be linked to uncertainty about NASA’s budget in fiscal 12 months 2024. A delay to the top of March, they said, could give NASA more time to find out how much money they’ll have available for the LTV effort in the approaching 12 months, including whether they’ll have the opportunity to fund multiple award.
Several firms have stated their plans to compete for the LTV contract, including startups like Astrolab and Intuitive Machines in addition to established firms like Leidos, Lockheed Martin and Teledyne Brown. That has led to unique partnerships, like Lockheed working with automaker General Motors and Leidos partnering with NASCAR, the auto racing company. NASA expects to start out using the rovers with the Artemis 5 mission at the top of the last decade.
As with another elements of Artemis, NASA plans to acquire the LTV lunar rover as a service, with firms owning the rovers and capable of use them for other applications when not needed for Artemis missions. In other services contracts, NASA has chosen at the least two providers, but for LTV NASA said only that it could select a number of providers.
NASA and a few firms have argued that a services approach saves the agency money while freeing up firms to try progressive approaches and seek non-NASA customers. That support, though, will not be universal.
Speaking on the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium Oct. 27, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin discussed the “regrettable square-wave flip from it’s all government on a regular basis in space to if it isn’t business, why are we bothering to do it?”
Griffin didn’t specifically mention LTV or other programs which have taken the services approach, but he argued that the shift to business approaches deprived government agencies of doing “a specific amount of labor themselves,” in the method build up experience they will then apply to other programs.
He also said firms advocating for business approaches are doing so because they need government money without the foundations and regulations involved in traditional government contracting approaches. “Until we will return to the correct definition of economic we’re going to be kidding ourselves.”