Route: NPLP¶
NASA-provided lunar payloads: instruments NASA picked in 2019 as ready or nearly ready to fly.
NASA-Provided Lunar Payloads (NPLP) had no open call: SMD asked NASA centers only for payloads ready or nearly ready to fly, and no copy of that request was found in public sources. NASA announced the selections on 21 February 2019 (12 payloads in the release; SMD's later pages count 13). The task orders of May 2019 put most of them on the first two landers, Astrobotic's Peregrine and Intuitive Machines' IM-1; payloads taken off Peregrine in 2023 went to later task orders, and NASA also named NIRVSS for Masten's lander (2020) and for IM-5 (2026).
Calls and selections¶
- 21 February 2019, selection: NASA Selects Experiments for Possible Lunar Flights in 2019 (19-010)
- 31 May 2019, award: NASA Selects First Commercial Moon Landing Services for Artemis Program (19-043)
- 23 September 2019, other: Lunar Discovery & Exploration Program Status
- 22 January 2020, award: First Commercial Moon Delivery Assignments to Advance Artemis
- 8 April 2020, award: NASA Awards Contract to Deliver Science, Tech to Moon Ahead of Human Missions (20-038)
- 12 March 2021, other: It’s Only a Paper Moon
- 6 April 2023, award: TO2-AB Science Payloads (TO2-AB)
- 29 August 2024, award: NASA Awards Intuitive Machines Lunar South Pole Research Delivery (24-110)
- 18 December 2024, award: More NASA Science, Tech will Fly to Moon Aboard Future Firefly Flight (24-152)
- 27 March 2026, award: NASA Selects Intuitive Machines to Deliver Artemis Science, Tech to Moon
- Program page: Lunar Instrument Development
Payloads¶
15 payloads on 5 missions in the records so far.
Peregrine Mission One¶
Astrobotic (now Voyager Lunar Systems) · Peregrine · failed to land
- Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS)
- Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS)
- Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS)
- Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS)
- Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL)
IM-1¶
Intuitive Machines · Nova-C Odysseus · landed
- Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS 1.0)
- Radio-wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the Photoelectron Sheath (ROLSES)
- Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL)
- Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (LN-1)
IM-4¶
Intuitive Machines · Nova-C · manifested
Blue Ghost Mission 3¶
Firefly Aerospace · Blue Ghost · manifested
- Neutron Measurements at the Lunar Surface (NMLS)
- Radio-wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES)
- Photovoltaic Investigation on the Lunar Surface (PILS)
IM-5¶
Intuitive Machines · Nova-D · manifested