NASA Announces $30.1 Million for Data from Innovative Lunar Demonstrations August 12, 2010
Posted by Nick Azer in : NASA, private space , 5commentsThis past week, NASA announced a big boost for private space companies with their eye on the Moon: $30.1 million made available for ‘how-to’ data on lunar missions!
The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is a way for NASA to announce that it’s ready and looking to purchase certain data:
“The BAA asks for information about the design and demonstration of an end-to-end lunar landing mission. This includes data associated with hardware design, development and testing; ground operations and integration; launch; trajectory correction maneuvers; lunar braking, burn and landing; and enhanced capabilities.” -“NASA Seeks Data from Innovative Lunar Demonstrations”, NASA
This essentially gives smaller companies making lunar efforts (like those in the Google Lunar X PRIZE) one big new customer. There will be multiple awards, so a number of different companies could submit proposals and receive contracts, resulting in a lot of potential new federal business opportunities.
Contracts have a $10,000 minimum, and NASA’s deadline for proposals is September 8th.
This is a significant concrete step in NASA’s move towards focusing on private space; by handing the money out externally, they could in theory help support the economy while acquiring that same data.
Stay tuned as that deadline approaches; September 8th will come up pretty fast, so before long we should be seeing a lot of interesting updates on the various contracts that come out of this :)
Back and Rolling :) August 10, 2010
Posted by Nick Azer in : Luna C/I , add a commentSite move’s all settled, so after that week off I’m back and rolling :)
I’ll have a $30 million update and a mondo-sized Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup over the next few days, so stay tuned, and keep an eye out for little revamps here and there with the shiny new digs :D