NASA's commercial program that buys lunar surface delivery as a service from a pool of pre-qualified providers.
Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program that contracts lunar surface delivery from a pool of pre-qualified commercial providers — Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, Firefly, Draper, and others. NASA pays for delivery of science instruments and tech demos to specified lunar sites; providers retain commercial use of their landers.
CLPS is the inflection point that turned 'lunar surface mission' from a billion-dollar bespoke program into a few-tens-of-millions commercial service. It has anchored an entire generation of US commercial lunar landers, several of which now have flight heritage.
NASA is planning to increase the total value of a contract for robotic lunar lander missions to support a proposed surge in flights for the agency’s moon base plans. The post NASA to increase value of CLPS contract to support surge of lunar lander missions appeared first on SpaceNews.