A rover the size of a Jeep Wrangler is headed for the moon and it will take quite a journey to get there.
Astrolab Inc., the small start-up that is building the rover, chose the biggest ride possible: Starship, the giant new spacecraft being developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company.
On Friday, Astrolab announced that it had signed an agreement with SpaceX for its Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover, or FLEX, to be a payload on an uncrewed Starship cargo mission set to lift off in mid-2026.
“This is SpaceX’s first commercial cargo contract to the lunar surface,” said Jaret Matthews, Astrolab founder and CEO.
SpaceX, which did not respond to requests for comment, has yet to announce that it is planning this commercial Starship mission to the surface of the moon, bound for the south polar region. Astrolab would be just one of the customers sharing the bulky cargo compartment of the Starship flight, Matthews said.
Mr. Matthews, an engineer who previously worked at SpaceX and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, founded Astrolab less than four years ago. Located a stone’s throw from SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, it has about 20 full-time employees, he said.
Although the Soviet Union in the 1970s and, more recently, China have landed robotic rovers on the moon, the United States has yet to send any. (NASA put wheels on the moon with the “moon buggy” the astronauts drove during Apollo 15, 16, and 17.)
Next year, NASA will send its Volatiles Research Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, which will search for water ice in the lunar south polar region. That’s the area that astronauts will explore for years to come as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
By contrast, Astrolab’s trip to the moon is, at least for now, an entirely commercial venture with no funding from NASA.
Mr Matthews declined to say how much it would cost to get FLEX to the moon or how much money Astrolab has raised. He said Astrolab would make money by lifting and deploying cargo for customers on the lunar surface. That could include scientific instruments. In the future, the rover could help build lunar infrastructure.
“Essentially providing what I like to call last-mile mobility on the moon,” Mr. Matthews said. “You can think of it as UPS to the moon. And in this analogy, Starship is the container ship that crosses the ocean and we are the local distribution solution.”
A robotic arm on the rover can help set up the payload on the surface. The mass of the rover and all cargo will be more than two metric tons. The FLEX rover is slightly larger than NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars and much faster, with a top speed of 15 miles per hour.
Mr. Matthews said that Astrolab already had several signed deals for payloads.
That seems to be part of the expanding potential market for Starship. SpaceX plans to use it to launch its second generation of Starlink internet communications satellites. Two flights that are going to go beyond the moon (but not land) have already been chartered by wealthy space tourists. Musk’s long-term dream is for a fleet of Starships to take colonists to Mars.
For NASA, Starship is the way its astronauts will land on the moon during the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for 2025. Before then, SpaceX will conduct an uncrewed flight to demonstrate the ability of spacecraft to reach the moon. and settle there in one piece.
If those schedules hold, the commercial cargo mission with the Astrolab rover could take place as early as next year.
Astrolab hopes that a later FLEX rover can win future business with NASA, which is turning to commercial companies to provide lunar terrain vehicles for astronauts, essentially a 21st-century version of the Apollo lunar buggy. Much larger companies such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are also expected to compete for the contract.
Chris Hadfield, a retired Canadian astronaut who advises Astrolab, helped with some field testing of a prototype passenger FLEX rover near Death Valley in California. “So it’s not just a cool concept, but it’s now a very proven vehicle,” he said.
Further into the future, the company has even grander visions. “Ultimately our goal is to have a fleet of rovers on both the Moon and Mars,” said Mr Matthews. “And I really think I see these vehicles as the ultimate catalysts for the alien economy.”
