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NASA took a heavily qualified, oblique, indirect pace on Tuesday, toward contracting with private companies to ship scientific payloads to the surface of the Moon, starting time as early as next year. The bureau put out a Request For Information for a "Small Lunar Surface Payload" program, and the request acknowledges the ability of US commercial outfits to develop lunar probes or landers. NASA hasn't committed to funding the projects yet, and in fact they're pretty emphatic about "cost-sharing." But this may exist a signal the agency is interested in a wider program to explore the Moon.

The Request For Data reads, in part:

The National Helmsmanship and Space Administration's (NASA) Human being Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) is seeking information on the availability of small-scale payloads that could be delivered to the Moon equally early on equally the 2022-2020 timeframe using U.South. commercial lunar cargo transportation service providers. Multiple U.Southward. companies are developing robotic lunar landing capabilities and take expressed plans to provide commercial cargo delivery services to the Moon in the well-nigh time to come. Information on lunar payloads that could be launched as early as 2022 would be valuable to NASA as it works to understand the potential part of the Moon in future exploration activities.

Information technology'due south besides early to crow "We're goin' back to the moon!" just still, merely this is clearly aimed in the direction of more manned lunar exploration.

Apollo 8 Moon Earth Blue Marble 1968

The iconic Earthrise photo, shot by the crew of Apollo 8.

One clue to NASA'southward motive is the person they chose to deliver the announcement. John Guidi is the deputy manager of their avant-garde exploration systems partition, which is itself a part of NASA's human spaceflight division. "NASA is asking for information about small instruments that could be placed on small lunar landers," said Guidi, "and our interest is that nosotros want to address our strategic knowledge gaps."

NASA'southward strategic knowledge gaps about the moon can be filled with basic inquiry about the availability of key resource on the lunar surface, including water ice. Also important is a skilful sense of how the lunar environment will impact humans who spend whatever pregnant fourth dimension on the moon.

In response to NASA's overture toward private enterprise, one interested outfit — a lunar exploration project called Moon Express — responded publicly with its own proposal. "The Moon Express Lunar Scout Program is designed to expand our partnership with NASA and back up the lunar science customs with new, low-cost lunar orbiter and surface missions," the visitor founder and chief executive, Bob Richards, told Ars Technica. "Our goal is to collapse the cost of access to the Moon to enable a new era of lunar exploration and development for students, scientists and commercial interests."

Moon Express is working with the United states government to conduct out commercial operations on the moon. Basically, they want to mine it. The site quotes Richards, in all caps because all caps means it'southward content, as saying that "H2o IS THE OIL OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM, AND THE MOON HAS BECOME A GAS STATION IN THE Sky."

It'southward not exactly a Kickstarter or a bake sale, but NASA is sort of piggybacking on private enterprise, as if the individual sector were an icebreaker ship headed for the Northwest Passage to Mars.