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PRIVATE SECTOR LUNAR EXPLORATION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 

Serial No. 115–27 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

DRAIN LAHOOD, Illinois 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

ANDY BIGGS, Arizona 

ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas 

NEAL P. DUNN, Florida 

CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana 

RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

JACKY ROSEN, Nevada 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

MARK TAKANO, California 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

CHARLIE CRIST, Florida 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

HON. BRIAN BABIN, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

ANDY BIGGS, Arizona 

NEAL P. DUNN, Florida 

CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

AMI BERA, California, Ranking Member 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

CHARLIE CRIST, Florida 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

September 7, 2017 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Brian Babin, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ........................................................................................................... 4 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6 

Statement by Representative Ami Bera, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on 

Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ........................................................................................................... 8 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 10 

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 12 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 13 

Witnesses: 

Mr. Jason Crusan, Director, Advanced Exploration Systems, NASA 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 17 

Mr. Bob Richards, Founder and CEO, Moon Express, Inc. 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 23 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 25 

Mr. John Thornton, Chief Executive Officer, Astrobotic Technology, Inc. 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 35 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 37 

Mr. Bretton Alexander, Director of Business Development and Strategy, Blue 

Origin 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 46 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 48 

Dr. George Sowers, Professor, Space Resources, Colorado School of Mines 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 53 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 55 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 63 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Mr. Jason Crusan, Director, Advanced Exploration Systems, NASA ................. 80 

Mr. Bob Richards, Founder and CEO, Moon Express, Inc. .................................. 87 

Mr. John Thornton, Chief Executive Officer, Astrobotic Technology, Inc. .......... 92 

(1) 

PRIVATE SECTOR LUNAR EXPLORATION 

Thursday, September 7, 2017 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brian Babin 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
2 

lAIIH\RS SMITh.T<·'J> 

CH•\iRMA~, 

Q:ongrcss of the 'lllnitrd ~rates 

lr'lousc of 1Rrprcsrntatiurs COMMITIEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

2321 RAVBURN HOUSE OFfiCE BUILDING 

WASHINGTON, DC 20515--6301 

Private Sector Lunar Exploration 

Thursday, September 7, 2017 

!O:OOa.m. 

2318 Rayburn House Office Building 

Witnesses 

Mr. Jason Crusan, Director, Advanced Exploration Systems, NASA 

Mr. Bob Richards, Founder and CEO, Moon Express, Inc. 

fDDif BERNICfJO"!NSGN. TPxa;, 

flANKlNl> Mf::M8EH 

Mr. John Thornton, Chief Executive Officer, Astrobotic Technology, Inc. 

Mr. Bretton Alexander, Director of Business Development and Strategy, 

Blue Origin 

Dr. George Sowers, Professor, Space Resources, Colorado School of Mines 
3 

TO: 

FROM: 

DATE: 

SUBJECT: 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE 

Charter 

Members, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

Majority Staff, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

September 7'h, 2017 

Space Subcommittee Hearing: "Private Sector Lunar Exploration" 

On Thursday, September 7'h, 2017 at I 0:00a.m. in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House 

Office Building, the Committee on Science, Space. and Technology, Subcommittee on Space, 

will hold a hearing titled, "Private Sector Lunar Exploration." 

Hearing Purpose 

NASA is supporting private sector exploration of the Moon through various programs. 

The private sector is also investing their own funding in the hopes of serving a future market for 

transportation, cargo delivery. and surface operations (including in situ resource utilization). 

Moon Express plans to launch a mission to the Moon later this year or early next year. 

Astrobotic recently announced a mission in 2019. Blue Origin disclosed its "Blue Moon" 

concept last spring. The United Launch Alliance and SpaceX have also indicated plans to operate 

in cislunar space in the near-future. The Hearing will review these efforts. and NASA's role, in 

order to better understand the challenges and opportunities that they present. 

Witnesses 

• Mr. Jason Crusan, Director, Advanced Exploration Systems, NASA 

• Mr. Bob Richards, Founder and CEO, Moon Express, Inc. 

• Mr. John Thornton, Chief Executive Officer, Astrobotic Technology, Inc. 

• Mr. Bretton Alexander. Director of Business Development and Strategy, Blue Origin 

• Dr. George Sowers, Professor. Space Resources, Colorado School of Mines 

Staff Contact 

For questions related to the hearing, please contact Mr. Tom Hammond. Staff Director, 

Space Subcommittee, Mr. G. Ryan Faith, Professional Staff Member, Space Subcommittee, or 

Ms. Sara Ratliff, Policy Assistant, Space Subcommittee, at 202-225-6371. 
4 

Chairman BABIN. The Subcommittee on Space will now come to 

order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of 

the Subcommittee at any time. 

Welcome to today’s hearing titled ‘‘Private Sector Lunar Exploration.’’ I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement. 

Exploration, particularly space exploration, is inherently and inescapably a matter of vital national strategic importance, both 

today and in years and decades to come. Because space exploration 

is so strongly linked to a wide range of current and future national 

interests, it is easy for us, as lawmakers, to fall into the habit of 

thinking of space as a strictly government operation and effort. 

But not only can space involve the private sector, it must involve 

the private sector. Fully incorporating newly explored domains into 

our sphere of economic influence will ensure U.S. leadership in the 

future. Moreover, space is so vast and immense that it is foolish 

to propose that we can meaningfully plumb its depths without resources, talent, and drive that are so abundant in America’s private 

sector. 

There’s no guarantee that the private sector will be successful. 

To the contrary, there will certainly be failures but the failures and 

successes should be determined by the free market. For this same 

reason, the private sector should not be artificially subsidized by 

the government. We should not leave our nation’s space exploration 

future purely to the whims of market uncertainties, and we should 

not bet our nation’s future in space on any one company. As we’ve 

seen so often in space, companies, and even entire sectors, come 

and they go. Our leadership in space is far too important to subject 

it to that kind of risk and uncertainty. 

So while we will begin our discussion here today with NASA’s 

testimony to provide context and help frame our deliberations, our 

intent is to understand not just how government-led exploration of 

space is proceeding, but where the private sector will take us and 

how these public and private actors will work together for their 

mutual benefit. 

This hearing gives us an opportunity to understand what has 

worked well in the past, as well as what we could do better in the 

future. NASA has a vast array of tools at its disposal: traditional 

contracts, grants, cooperative research and development agreements, various funded and unfunded Space Act Agreements, and 

anchor tenancy agreements. All of these tools offer unique advantages and risks. Careful consideration should be given to which tool 

is used in order to ensure that the taxpayer is protected, and that 

the government does not corrupt the market. Ultimately, I hope 

that we can better understand if, how, and when the Moon can be 

integrated into human economic activity. 

The Moon is the closest source of raw materials to Earth. In particular, the lunar poles may contain vast quantities of water, an invaluable resource for space exploration. Water is not only necessary 

to support the life of astronauts and crew; it can also be broken 

down into hydrogen and oxygen, which are excellent propellants. 

Industrial, financial, and technical giants like Carnegie, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, and Edison dominated the economic and indus-
5 

trial landscape of the late 19th century America. Advances in information technology in the late 20th century brought us Microsoft, 

Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. 

Will space be the next sector to lead economic growth? I don’t 

know. If space becomes a home and workplace for humanity, if 

space can become part of our sphere of economic influence, then 

someday, perhaps in the far future, we will see those industries 

take root and grow. 

But we cannot compel such an ambitious outcome, but by careful 

and thoughtful consideration we can, hopefully and humbly, enable 

it. At the very least we should not stifle it. I hope that today’s discussion will help inform all of our thinking about the future of private sector exploration of space. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Babin follows:] 
6 

COMtv'.IH[[ Ot·l 

SCIENCE, SPACE, & TECHNOLOGY Lamar Smith, Cha;rman 

For Immediate Release 

September 7, 2017 

Media Contact: Thea McDonald 

(202) 225-6371 

Statement of Space Subcommittee Chairman Brian Babin (R-Texas} 

Private Sector Lunar Exploration 

Chairman Babin: Exploration, particularly space exploration, is inherently and 

inescapably a matter of vital national strategic importance, both today and in years 

and decades to come. Because space exploration is so strongly linked to a wide 

range of current and future national interests, it is easy for us, as lawmakers, to fall into 

the habit of thinking of space as a strictly government effort 

But not only can space involve the private sector, it must involve the private sector. 

Fully incorporating newly explored domains into our sphere of economic influence will 

ensure US leadership in the future. Moreover, space is so vast and immense that it is 

foolish to propose that we can meaningfully plumb its depths without the resources, 

talent, and drive that are so abundant in America's private sector. There is no 

guarantee that the private sector will be successfuL To the contrary, there will certainly 

be failures. But the failures and successes should be determined by the free markeL 

For this same reason, the private sector should not be artificially subsidized by the 

government. We should not leave our nation's space exploration future purely to the 

whims of market uncertainties, and we should not bet our nation's future in space on 

any one company. As we've seen so often in space, companies (and even entire 

sectors) come and go. Our leadership in space is too important to subject it to that 

kind of risk and uncertainty. 

So while we will begin our discussion here today with NASA's testimony, to provide 

context and help frame our deliberations, our intent is to understand not just how 

government-led exploration of space is proceeding, but where the private sector will 

take us and how these public and private actors will work together for their mutual 

benefit 

This hearing gives us an opportunity to understand what has worked well in the past. as 

well as what we could do better in the future. NASA has a vast array of tools at its 

disposal: traditional contracts, grants, cooperative research and development 

agreements, various funded and unfunded Space Act Agreements, and anchor 

tenancy agreements. All of these tools offer unique advantages and risks. Careful 

consideration should be given to which tool is used in order to ensure that the 

taxpayer is protected, and that the government does not corrupt the markeL 

Ultimately, I hope we can better understand if. how, and when the Moon can be 

integrated into human economic activity. The Moon is the closest source of raw 

materials to Earth. In particular, the lunar poles may contain vast quantities of water, 
7 

an invaluable resource for space exploration. Water is not only necessary to support 

the life of astronauts and crew; it can also be broken down into hydrogen and 

oxygen, which are excellent propellants. 

Industrial, financial, and technical giants like Carnegie, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, and 

Edison dominated the economic and industrial landscape of the late 19th century 

America. Advances in information technology in the late 20th century brought us 

Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. 

Will space be the next sector to lead economic growth? I do not know. If space 

becomes a home and workplace for humanity, if space can become part of our 

sphere of economic influence, then someday- perhaps in the far future- we will 

see those industries take root and grow. 

We cannot compel such an ambitious outcome, but by careful and thoughtful 

consideration we can, hopefully and humbly, enable it. At the very least we should 

not stifle it. I hope that today's discussion will help inform all of our thinking about the 

future of private sector exploration of space. 

### 
8 

Chairman BABIN. And now at I’d like to turn to the gentlelady 

from—the gentleman from California, Dr. Bera. 

Mr. BERA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And actually before I 

begin, I want to express my full support and sympathies to both 

you, your constituents in your district, and the employees at the 

NASA Johnson Space Center, and all those that were affected by 

Hurricane Harvey as well as those being affected by Hurricane 

Irma. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them, and they have our 

full support and you have our full support through the long recovery. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you. 

Mr. BERA. It also does emphasize the important work of this 

Subcommittee as well as the Full Committee in better understanding Earth sciences, better understanding weather changes, 

and making sure that we do have the best forecasting equipment 

and satellites that are out there. 

With that, I want to welcome the distinguished panel today, and 

thank you for calling this important hearing on lunar exploration 

plans and proposals. 

Forty-eight years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched 

down on the Moon, imprinting mankind’s first footsteps on the 

Moon’s surface. When astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison 

Schmitt lifted off the lunar surface on December 14, 1972, who 

would have imagined that they would be the last humans to visit 

the Moon for nearly a half-century and counting? 

Now, we don’t know exactly when humans will return to the 

lunar surface, but what is clear is that we’re at the doorstep of a 

renaissance in Moon exploration. Soon, the Moon may entertain 

many visitors in the form of robotic spacecraft and rovers from 

many countries, and some, as we will hear today, will be owned 

and operated by commercial entities. Innovative technologies that 

will enable testing and demonstrations may one day lead to routine 

cargo and perhaps even routine human flights to and from the 

Moon and help promote increased economic activity in space. However, let’s also not forget that the Moon remains an important scientific research center and the importance of finding that publicprivate nexus. 

A 2007 National Academies report identified several scientific 

priorities for Moon exploration including the exploration of the 

lunar poles. According to the report, the South Pole Aitken Basin, 

in particular, is a priority for further scientific exploration because 

‘‘it is the oldest and deepest observed impact structure on the Moon 

and the largest in the Solar System.’’ And, you know, that exploration, as the Chairman touched on, you know, if in fact we confirm the presence of lunar ice there, can have huge impact, and certainly as we think about the Moon as a potential secondary launch 

site as we go and further explore into deep space, it’s incredible important. But also as we look at this pristine laboratory, we want 

to make sure that, you know, we are balancing the research 

needs—if I think about Star Trek and the prime directive—and 

that we are not actually introducing other organisms or anything 

else, that may actually disrupt our science. 

So, I look forward to hearing about the commercial entities, the 

potential of that nexus of the commercial sector, the scientific com-
9 

munity, NASA all working together, and I think this is an incredibly important time for both lunar exploration but also for deep 

space exploration, and the importance of this Committee at this 

particular time I think is incredibly important. 

A few questions that I hope to hear being addressed in today’s 

hearing are, what are the market drivers for commercial efforts to 

explore the Moon? Who are the projected customers for planned 

private lunar exploration services and what services will be provided to those customers? How is NASA currently collaborating 

with the private sector on exploration of the Moon and are the current models of partnership working well? And are there opportunities for the private sector to collaborate with the science community on their exploration plans? 

I’m looking forward to hearing, and I think it’ll be very interesting. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bera follows:] 
10 

OPENING STATEMENT 

Ranking Member Ami Bera (D-CA) 

of the Subcommittee on Space 

House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

Subcommittee on Space 

"Private Sector Lunar Exploration" 

September 7, 2017 

Before I begin Mr. Chairman, I want to express my sympathies to you, to the constituents of 

your district, the employees of the NASA Johnson Space Center, and to all those affected by 

Hurricane Harvey. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them. 

Good moming. And welcome to our distinguished panel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for 

calling this hearing to examine private sector lunar explorations plans and proposals. 

Forty eight years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Moon, 

imprinting mankind's first footsteps on the Moon's surface. When astronauts Eugene Ceman 

and Harrison Schmitt lifted offfrom the lunar surface on December 14, 1972, they couldn't 

imagine that they would be the last humans to visit the Moon for nearly a half-century and 

counting. Exactly when humans will return on the lunar surface is uncertain. However, what 

is clear is that we are on the doorstep of a renaissance in Moon exploration. 

Soon, the Moon may entertain many visitors in the form of robotic spacecraft and rovers 

from many countries. And some, as we will hear today, will be owned and operated by 

commercial entities. Innovative technologies that will enable testing and demonstrations may 

one day lead to routine cargo--and perhaps even human-flights to and from the Moon and 

help promote increased economic activity in space. However, we should not forget that there 

remains important scientific research left to be done on the Moon. 

A 2007 National Academies report identified several scientific priorities for moon 

exploration including the exploration of the lunar poles. According to the report, the South 

Pole Aitken Basin, in particular, is a priority for further scientific exploration because it is the 

"oldest and deepest observed impact structure on the Moon and the largest in the Solar 

System". Determining a formation date of this impact basin is critical for understanding lunar 

chronology and the 2011 Academies' planetary science decadal survey also highlighted the 

need for research on the South Pole Aitken Basin. 

I raise this point about scientific research in response to the possibility of commercial 

resource extraction and utilization on the Moon. In particular, we need to understand what 

ways, if any, commercial missions to the Moon may potentially impact future scientific 

investigations. 

However, the aforementioned 2007 National Academies report noted the same data sets that 

are needed for exploration of lunar resources are also necessary for understanding the 

geochemical evolution of the Moon. 
11 

Mr. Chairman, there is a potential opportunity for commercial entities and the scientific 

community to collaborate on acquiring data and research that would support both their 

interests. This is a worthwhile collaboration for us to encourage. 

Key questions I hope we will address at today's hearing include: 

• What are the market drivers for commercial efforts to explore the Moon? 

• Who are the projected customers for planned private lunar exploration services and what 

services will be provided to those customers? 

• How is NASA currently collaborating with the private sector on exploration of the 

Moon? Are the current models of partnership working well? 

• Are there opportunities for the private sector to collaborate with the science community 

on their exploration plans? 

Mr. Chairman, we clearly have many things to discuss this morning. I look forward to 

hearing from our witnesses about the opportunities and challenges in establishing a 

sustainable space economy on the Moon. 

Thank you and I yield back. 
12 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you. 

And now I would like to recognize the Ranking Member of the 

Full Committee for a statement, Ms. Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, and welcome to our witnesses. This hearing on private sector 

lunar exploration, I think is important. 

While not a substitute for our governmental space programs, 

there are many innovative ideas for potential non-governmental 

roles in space emerging. Private sector innovation can capture the 

spirit of opportunity and engage and inspire the development of scientific and technical talent. It has the capacity to support commercial interests as well as governmental space activities, where appropriate. 

This morning, we will hear about one example of potential commercial space activities—private sector lunar exploration. To date, 

only governmental entities have explored the Moon, but the private 

sector is getting interested in the Moon too. 

It’s no surprise that the Moon and its vicinity are of interest to 

a growing number of private sector entities and other nations. The 

Moon provides a potential testing ground for human exploration 

systems, operations, and activities. It harbors resources that could 

potentially be used to support lunar surface operations or exploration beyond the Moon, and some would argue that it even offers 

a destination for potential space tourists. I look forward to hearing 

from our witnesses about their plans for private sector lunar activities, NASA’s current role in those efforts, and about both the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for the private sector in carrying out their plans. 

In addition, while not the focus of this hearing, it is important 

to note that the Moon has long been a body of scientific study, 

through U.S.-led and international lunar science missions, including from samples collected and returned on the Apollo missions. To 

that end Mr. Chairman, as we discuss private sector plans for 

lunar exploration, it is important that we understand the potential 

impacts of such activities on scientific priorities related to the 

Moon. 

Before I close, I want to extend my thoughts and prayers to those 

in Houston and the surrounding areas and, especially, Mr. Chairman, to you for being a stalwart in an area that was devastated 

with the storm. I want to include the NASA employees, contractors, 

and partners of the Johnson Space Center. Their steadfast commitment to ensuring the safety of the ISS crew and continuation of the 

James Webb testing during Harvey’s devastating rains exemplifies 

the professionalism and commitment they give our country’s space 

program every day, even during times of extreme duress. 

I thank you, and I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:] 
13 

OPENING STATEMENT 

Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) 

House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

Subcommittee on Space 

"Private Sector Lunar Exploration " 

September 7, 2017 

Good morning, and welcome to our witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this 

hearing on "Private Sector Lunar Exploration". While not a substitute for our governmental 

space programs, there are many innovative ideas for potential non-governmental roles in space 

emerging. Private sector innovation can capture the spirit of opportunity and engage and inspire 

the development of scientific and technical talent. It has the capacity to support commercial 

interests as well as governmental space activities, where appropriate. 

This morning, we will hear about one example of potential commercial space activities--private 

sector lunar exploration. To date only government entities have explored the Moon, but the 

private sector is getting interested in the Moon too. It's no surprise that the Moon and its vicinity 

are of interest to a growing number of private sector entities and other nations. The Moon 

provides a potential testing ground for human exploration systems, operations, and activities. It 

harbors resources that could potentially be used to support lunar surface operations or 

exploration beyond the Moon, and some would argue that it even offers a destination for 

potential space tourists. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about their plans for private sector lunar activities, 

NASA's current role in those efforts, and about both the opportunities and challenges that lie 

ahead for the private sector in carrying out their plans. In addition, while not the focus of this 

hearing, it is important to note that the Moon has long been a body of scientific study, through 

U.S.-led and international lunar science missions, including from samples collected and returned 

on the Apollo missions. To that end Mr. Chairman, as we discuss private sector plans for lunar 

exploration, it is important that we understand the potential impacts of such activities on 

scientific priorities related to the Moon. 

Before I close, I want to extend my thoughts and prayers to those in Houston and the surrounding 

areas that were affected by Hurricane Harvey, including the NASA employees, contractors, and 

partners of the Johnson Space Center. Their steadfast commitment to ensuring the safety of the 

ISS crew and continuation of James Webb's testing during Harvey's devastating rains 

exemplifies the professionalism and commitment they give our country's space program every 

day, even during times of extreme duress. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 
14 

Chairman BABIN. And we sure thank you for your comments 

there. 

Now let me introduce our witnesses. Our first witness today is 

Mr. Jason Crusan, Director of Advanced Exploration Systems at 

NASA. He holds bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and 

physics, a master’s degree in computer information systems, and is 

currently a candidate for a doctorate in engineering management 

at George Washington University. Thank you for being here today. 

Our second witness today is Mr. Bob Richards, Founder and CEO 

of Moon Express. He also chairs the Space Commerce Committee 

of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and serves on the Board 

of the Space Foundation. Mr. Richards studied aerospace and industrial engineering at Ryerson University, physics and astronomy 

at the University of Toronto, and space science at Cornell University. Thank you for being here. 

Our third witness today is Mr. John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic 

Technology. Mr. Thornton led development of Astrobotic spacecraft 

including Red Rover, Polaris, and the Artemis lander, and the Griffin lander. He holds both a bachelor’s of science and a master’s of 

science degree in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon 

University. Thank you for being here. 

And then our fourth witness today is Mr. Bretton Alexander, Director of Business Development and Strategy at Blue Origin. He 

has served as a Senior Policy Analyst for Space Issues in the White 

House Office of Science and Technology Policy under both Presidents Bush and Clinton as well as President of the Commercial 

Spaceflight Federation. Mr. Alexander holds both a master’s degree 

and a bachelor’s of science degree in aerospace engineering from 

the University of Virginia. Good to see you this morning, too. 

Our fifth witness today is Dr. George Sowers, Professor of Space 

Resources at Colorado School of Mines. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Colorado. You heard that. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Ed, appreciate that. I think they 

heard that, though. 

Dr. Sowers has also worked for Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin, and the United Launch Alliance. Dr. Sowers holds a bachelor’s 

of science in physics from Georgia Tech as well as a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Colorado. He is also a Fellow of the 

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. 

So I now recognize Mr. Crusan for five minutes to present his 

testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. JASON CRUSAN, DIRECTOR, 

ADVANCED EXPLORATION SYSTEMS, NASA 

Mr. CRUSAN. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, 

thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss NASA’s 

support of private sector exploration of the Moon. 

NASA is working to foster commercial use of space and engagement with the broader domestic and international space community. This effort will build on the progress NASA commercial partnerships have been using to develop spacecraft and rockets capable 

of delivering cargo and soon astronauts to low-Earth orbit. 

Its capabilities could also enable new science and exploration 

missions of interest to the larger scientific and academic commu-
15 

nities and can fit well with concepts being discussed for human 

missions in cislunar space. In turn, they have the potential to provide important enabling competencies as NASA expands human 

presence into deep space. 

NASA lunar science has helped map the Moon in incredible detail, determine the presence of water ice, and understand the 

Earth’s satellite’s irregular gravity field. NASA lunar missions are 

increasing global knowledge and understanding of the origins of 

our solar system, informing future exploration efforts of the Moon 

and other planetary bodies, and bringing the agency closer to having infrastructure and technologies needed to explore future destinations like Mars. 

As part of the agency’s overall strategy to conduct deep space exploration, NASA has been supporting the development of commercial lunar exploration. In 2014, NASA introduced an initiative 

called Lunar CATALYST, and the purpose of this initiative was to 

enable development of U.S. private sector robotic lunar landers 

that can deliver payloads to the lunar surface using U.S. commercial launch capabilities. Through CATALYST, NASA has provided 

partners with in-kind contributions including technical expertise, 

access to test facilities, software and loaning of equipment, and the 

initial flights of these commercial lunar landers may begin as early 

as 2018. 

As a result, one or more of our partners would be able to market 

lunar payload delivery services for small instruments and technology demonstrations. Future commercial lunar transportation capabilities could also support science and exploration objectives such 

as sample return, geophysical network deployment, resource utilization, and technology advancements. 

The agency is currently assessing possible robotic mission concepts, acquisition approaches, and associated payloads for a potential series of lunar cargo missions to the surface of the Moon starting as early as 2018. 

In support of these objectives, NASA issued a Request for Information seeking ideas from industry for NASA participation in existing or future commercial missions to the Moon. The agency is interested in assessing the availability of commercial delivery services from Earth to the lunar surface as early as next fiscal year. 

NASA continues to pursue other lunar exploration efforts as well. 

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has produced the 

highest quality global topographic map of any planetary body and 

continues to share its data openly with the public. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter mission, South Korea’s first mission in exploration, will include NASA’s ShadowCam, a highly sensitive optical 

camera that will peer into the regions that may hold volatiles, including water. NASA plans to include four Lunar Research 

CubeSats as part of the 13 CubeSats that are launching on Exploration Mission 1, the first launch of the Space Launch System. And 

lastly, NASA has been studying a potential Resource Prospector 

surface mission that would take the next step in understanding in 

the harvesting of resources and regolith, specifically volatiles, particularly in the lunar polar regions. 

So NASA is committed to expanding partnerships with the U.S. 

government agencies as well as academic, industrial and entrepre-
16 

neurial and international communities. NASA’s collaborative efforts for fostering innovation in a growing space industry are continuing to transform capabilities and accelerate technologies to 

achieve national strategic goals. 

Mr. Chairman, I’d be happy to respond to any questions you or 

the other Members of the Subcommittee have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Crusan follows:] 
17 

Statement of 

Jason Crusan 

HOLD FOR RELEASE 

UNTIL PRESENTED 

BY WITNESS 

Sept. 7, 2017 

Director, Advanced Exploration Systems Division 

Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration 

before the 

Subcommittee on Space 

Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

U. S. House of Representatives 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 

today to discuss NASA's support of private sector exploration of the Moon. In support of its efforts to 

expand the frontiers of spaceflight capabilities in this new era of space exploration, NASA is working to 

foster the fullest possible commercial use of space and engagement with the broader community. 

Building on the progress of NASA's partnerships with the U.S. commercial space industry to develop new 

spacecraft and rockets capable of delivering cargo, and soon, astronauts, to low-Earth orbit, the Agency 

recognizes the U.S. industry's interest in reaching and exploring the Moon. Commercial robotic lunar 

lander capabilities could address emerging demand by private customers who wish to conduct activities 

on the Moon and could also enable new science and exploration missions of interest to the larger 

scientific and academic communities. These emerging commercial capabilities, in tum, have the potential 

of providing important enabling capabilities as NASA expands human presence into deep space, 

including to the surface of Mars. 

NASA lunar science has helped to map the Moon, determine the presence of water ice, and understand 

Earth's satellite's irregular gravity field. NASA lunar missions are increasing global understanding of the 

origins of our solar system, informing future exploration efforts of the Moon and other planetary bodies, 

and bringing the Agency closer to having the infrastructure and technologies needed to explore future 

destinations like Mars. Future missions could help characterize the internal structure of the Moon and 

characterize ancient impact basins, in addition to demonstrating key technologies necessary to support 

future robotic and human exploration infrastructures. 

Lunar CATALYST: Promoting Private Sector Robotic Exploration of the Moon 

As part of the Agency's overall strategy to conduct deep space exploration, NASA is also supporting the 

development of commercial lunar exploration. In 2014, NASA introduced an initiative called Lunar 

Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (CATALYST). The purpose of the initiative is to 

encourage the development of U.S. private-sector robotic lunar landers capable of successfully delivering 

payloads to the lunar surface using U.S. commercial launch capabilities. 

In September 2014, NASA signed three-year Space Act Agreements (SAAs) with three U.S. firms: 

Astrobotic Technologies of Pittsburgh, PA; Masten Space Systems of Mojave, CA; and Moon Express 

Inc., of Cape Canaveral, FL. These companies were competitively selected on the basis of their proposed 

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18 

technical approach, financial plan, and commercialization strategy. Through Lunar CATALYST, NASA 

has provided partners with in-kind contributions including technical expertise, access to test facilities, 

software, and the loaning of equipment. Initial flights of commercial lunar landers may begin as early as 

2018, and as a result one or more of these companies will be able to market lunar payload delivery 

services for small instruments and technology demonstrations. Future commercial lunar transportation 

capabilities could support science and exploration objectives such as sample returns, geophysical network 

deployment, resource utilization, and technology advancements. 

The Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Division in NASA's Human Exploration and Operations 

Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. AES pioneers new approaches for rapidly developing 

prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities and validating operational concepts for future human 

missions beyond Earth orbit, and Lunar CATALYST represents another step in the Agency's effort to 

spur growth in the commercial space sector. The NASA side of the Lunar CATALYST team is made up 

of lander development expertise from NASA's space science and human exploration communities, 

primarily from Marshall Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center. 

NASA recognizes that private-sector investment in technologies intended to enable commercial lunar 

activities, at least initially with respect to U.S. and other nations' exploration activities, has been 

increasing and anticipates that industry will eventually be able to provide commercial cargo transportation 

services to the lunar surface to both public and private customers. Commercial robotic lunar lander 

capabilities could address emerging demand by private customers who wish to conduct activities on the 

Moon, even while providing cost-effective transportation services for NASA's science and exploration 

missions, thereby benefitting the larger scientific and academic communities. 

A Diversity of NASA Lunar Exploration Efforts 

Along with our commercial and international partners, NASA has a continued interest in lunar 

exploration and is working to continue scientific investigations of our celestial neighbor that will also 

inform the Agency's deep space human exploration plans. The Science Mission Directorate, Space 

Technology Mission Directorate, and Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (SMD, 

STMD, and HEOMD, respectively) are currently assessing possible robotic mission concepts, acquisition 

approaches, and associated payloads for a potential series of lunar cargo (i.e., uncrewed) missions to the 

surface of the Moon starting as early as 2018 and extending through at least 2024. NASA is considering 

a variety of objectives that could be addressed sending stand-alone instruments, experiments, or more 

complex payloads to the lunar surface. These would consist of NASA primary, secondary, or NASA 

hosted payloads and include the potential to gather data from commercial lunar surface missions and/or 

return payloads or samples to the Earth. 

In support of these objectives, NASA issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking ideas from industry 

for the Agency to possibly participate in existing or future commercial missions to the Moon. The 

Agency is interested in assessing the availability of a commercial launch from Earth to the lunar surface 

to provide landing services as early as Fiscal Year 2018, and through the next decade. This approach 

offers the Agency the potential to simultaneously address high-priority science, critical strategic 

objectives related to exploration, and technology demonstration, using commercially provided domestic 

space services and hardware. 

Near-term robotic missions to the lunar surface offer an opportunity to achieve priority objectives for 

science and exploration. An early mission comprised of one or two instruments could reduce cost and 

risk for high priority science, and ensure the robustness of the lunar science community. A mission 

focused specifically on lunar polar volatiles may be the key to future exploration architectures, and 

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19 

characterizing volatiles entrainment in regolith could be game-changing. Critical technologies can be 

demonstrated to enable improvements in precision landing, power generating, and low-temperature 

environments, to name a few areas. These missions might also serve as advance planning for Mars and 

other destinations or to enable deep-space architectures. 

Other NASA lunar exploration efforts include: 

The selection of the Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) through NASA's Small 

Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program. LunaH-Map is a NASA 

Planetary Science Division Cube Sat mission designed by Arizona State University to sense the 

presence of hydrogen in craters and other areas on the Moon using a neutron spectrometer. When 

completed, it will be one of 13 CubeSats set to launch on Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1)- the 

first integrated flight of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft. Upon 

arrival, the LunaH-Map spacecraft will produce the most detailed map to date of the Moon's 

water deposits, unveiling new details about the depth and distribution of the ice that has been 

identified from previous missions. Confirming and mapping those deposits in detail will help 

NASA understand how much water might be available and will help inform NASA's strategy for 

sending humans farther into the solar system. 

AES also selected three lunar research CubeSats set to be launched on EM-I: 

o Lunar Flashlight will map the lunar south pole for volatiles and demonstrate several 

technological firsts, including being the first CubeSat to reach the Moon, the first 

planetary CubeSat mission to use green propulsion, and the first mission to use lasers to 

look for water ice. It will shine light into the shaded polar regions with near-infrared 

lasers, while the on-board spectrometer measures surface reflection and composition. 

Lunar Flashlight is developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with contributions 

from Marshall Space Flight Center. 

o Lunar JceCube will prospect for lunar volatiles and water during its six months in lunar 

orbit, investigating the distribution of water and other volatiles as a function of time of 

day, latitude, and regolith age and composition. JceCube's miniaturized Broadband 

InfraRed Compact High Resolution Explorer Spectrometer (BIRCHES) instrument will 

prospect for water in ice, liquid, and vapor forms from a highly inclined elliptical lunar 

orbit. Morehead State University in Kentucky is leading the mission, with contributions 

from the Busek Company and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. 

o Lockheed Martin's Lun!R mission is hosting a mid-wave Infra-Red (MWIR) sensor 

Lun!R will perform a lunar flyby to capture and downlink images of the lunar surface and 

its environment. It will help address strategic knowledge gaps related to surface 

characterization, remote sensing, and site selection observations. The data collected on 

thermal environments will add to the body of knowledge on the composition, structure, 

interaction with the space environment, and interaction with solar particles and the lunar 

regolith. 

AES has partnered with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARl) on the Korea Pathfinder 

Lunar Orbiter (KPLO)- the country's first lunar exploration mission in 2020. Pursuant to a 

cooperative international SAA, NASA will provide Deep Space Network communication and 

lunar navigation and design expertise in exchange for flying one of AES's science instruments in 

development, the ShadowCam, on the KPLO mission. This instrument is a highly sensitive 

optical camera that will peer into the Moon's permanently shadowed areas at the lunar poles that 

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20 

we suspect holds large amounts of volatiles, including water that may be useful for future 

exploration missions. KARl and NASA will also share data from KPLO's other instruments and, 

with support from the Planetary Science Division (PSD), are planning to add additional 

international scientific expertise to all the KPLO instrument teams. 

NASA Planetary Science Division's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a mission whose 

seven different instruments are mapping the surface of the Moon and its surrounding 

environment. LRO has produced the highest quality, global topographic map of any planetary 

body and continues to share its data with the public through the Planetary Data System (PDS). 

Data is uploaded on a 3-month cadence and the public can suggest future targets for highresolution imagery (which are prioritized by scientific objective or completed on a noninterference basis). Most recently, LRO has been acquiring imaging and topographic data for 

candidate Chandrayaan-2 landing sites, making these data available to the Indian Space Research 

Organisation (!SRO) through PDS. The PDS data has also been utilized by the Google Lunar XPrize foundation for locating potential landing sites. 

NASA has also studied a potential Resource Prospector (RP) mission to provide information that 

could transform how the Agency approaches long-duration exploration. NASA's efforts to date 

have been focused on developing a suite of instruments to locate resources in regolith, 

specifically volatiles, particularly in the lunar polar regions. Building on the findings of the 

Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), Gravity Recovery and Interior 

Laboratory (GRAIL), Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), LRO, and 

Chandrayaan-1 missions that proved the existence of water on the Moon, a potential future 

mission would take the next step in understanding how to harvest those resources. This potential 

"Resource Prospector" concept is being reviewed by the Agency to determine how and when the 

critical measurements should be pursued. 

The NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and 

development (R&D) accelerator that tackles gaps in knowledge useful to the space program. 

NASA, in collaboration with SET!, established this public-private partnership with leading IT 

companies such as Intel, Nvidia, IBM Watson, Google, and others. FDL's industry partners 

provided hardware, software, subject matter experts, and funding while NASA provided modest 

stipends for the U.S.-based participants and subject matter experts. The 2017 FDL was an intense 

eight-week concentrated study on topics not only important to NASA, but also to humanity's 

future. This year, FDL focused on challenges within the fields of planetary defense, space 

resources, and space weather. The Space Resources challenge, funded in part by the Luxembourg 

Space Resources LLC, focused on developing algorithms to speed identification of craters and 

other hazards on the lunar surface. Working from data sets from NASA's LRO spacecraft, the 

team of lunar science and AI early-career scientists applied machine learning to removing 

artifacts from the imagery and altimeter data that yielded faster image resolution. 

Conclusion 

NASA is making advances to push the boundaries of human exploration farther into the solar system, and 

continues to spur development in the commercial space sector. Robotic missions to the Moon have 

revealed the existence of local resources including oxygen and water that may be highly valuable for 

exploration of the solar system. The potential to use the lunar surface in partnership with our commercial 

and intemational partners may allow these resources to be characterized and used to enable future 

exploration and pioneering. NASA is committed to expanding partnerships with other U.S. 

Government agencies, as well as the academic, industriaL entrepreneurial, and international 

4 
21 

communities, recognizing them as indispensable contributors of skill and creativity to our missions. 

An important part of NASA's strategy is to partner with the commercial space industry to help the Agency 

achieve its strategic goals and objectives. NASA's collaborative efforts are fostering innovation and a 

growing commercial space industry, while transforming capabilities and accelerating technologies needed 

to achieve national strategic goals. 

Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to respond to any questions you or the other Members of the 

Subcommittee may have. 

5 
22 

Jason Crusan, Director, 

Advanced Exploration Systems 

As director of the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Division within the Human 

Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HE OM D), Jason Crusan serves as 

NASA's senior executive, advisor and advocate on technology and innovation 

approaches leading to new flight and system capabilities for human exploration of 

space. He manages over 450 civil servant employees and 150 onsite contractors with 

an active portfolio of 20-30 technology, engineering and flight development projects. He 

leads integration with the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate and 

programs within other HEOMD divisions including International Space Station and 

Exploration Systems Development. 

Using an integrated approach that leverages public-private partnerships, industry, 

international partners, and academia, Mr. Crusan serves as the senior leader for AES 

across all NASA centers which involves: developing and maintaining critical human 

spaceflight capabilities; maturing new integrated systems, instruments, and ground 

systems; and delivering critical multi-million dollar flight hardware for NASA. He 

provides the executive management and leadership needed to develop effective 

technology development strategies, system acquisition strategies, contracting 

mechanisms, joint investment models and partnerships-in short, he develops the 

innovative approaches needed to maximize NASA's access to new technologies and 

capabilities for human spaceflight. 

Before becoming director of the agency's new Advanced Exploration Systems 

organization in 2012, Crusan fostered innovation at NASA in many key roles beginning 

in 2005. He served as chief technologist for space operations, and successfully directed 

various technical and strategic initiatives as program executive or project manager. He 

was part of the Miniature Radio Frequency Program (Mini-RF), which flew two radar 

instruments to the moon to map the lunar poles, search for water ice, and demonstrate 

future NASA communication technologies. Currently, he also serves as the Director of 

the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) formed to advance the 

utilization of open innovation methodologies within the U.S. government. 

Crusan holds bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics, a master's 

degree in computer information systems, and is currently a candidate for a doctorate in 

Engineering Management at George Washington University. Mr. Crusan is married and 

has two children. 
23 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Crusan. 

I now recognize Mr. Richards for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. BOB RICHARDS, 

FOUNDER AND CEO, MOON EXPRESS, INC. 

Mr. RICHARDS. Thank you, Chairman Babin, Ranking Member 

Bera and Members of the Subcommittee. It is an honor to be invited to speak with you today about the efforts of U.S. commercial 

space industry in pioneering new business models for lunar exploration and development. 

Only a few decades ago, Earth orbit was an economic frontier 

and the singular domain of government space agencies today. The 

private sector satellites generated billions of dollars of commerce 

annually in a mature, well-established economic sphere that impacts our everyday lives and has immeasurably improved life on 

Earth. 

Now commerce looks beyond Earth orbit to a lunar frontier, 

which has also been the realm of governments but over the last 

decade, a combination of exponential technology and private sector 

investment has brought the Moon within reach of the commercial 

sector. 

Today, I address you as Founder and CEO of Moon Express, a 

privately funded commercial space company created to seek and 

unlock the resources of the Moon through a progressive series of 

commercial robotic missions starting with our maiden voyage 

scheduled to launch next year. 

I founded Moon Express with dotcom pioneers Naveen Jain and 

Barney Pell in 2010 as an enduring business, which starts with the 

creation of new space technologies and low-cost missions designed 

to capture and generate new markets for robotic lunar exploration. 

We are a Silicon Valley-born and -backed enterprise with investors 

ranging from billionaires to venture funds to celebrities. We began 

our life at the NASA Ames Research Park in Mountain View, California, and in 2015 we relocated the company to Cape Canaveral 

on Florida’s Space Coast where we have licensed the historic 

Launch Complexes 17 and 18 from the U.S. Air Force and are currently refurbishing these facilities for our spacecraft, engineering 

tests, and our mission control. 

Our vision is to open up the lunar frontier for everyone with 

turnkey payload data and mission surfaces to the Moon for a wide 

range of customers globally including governments, NGOs, commercial enterprises, universities, and consumers. 

To do so, we have developed a flexible, scalable robotic explorer 

system that can reach the Moon and other destinations in the solar 

system from Earth orbit. After years of quiet development, we unveiled our robotic exploration architecture on July 12th just down 

the hall from this hearing room ranging from our MX–1E scoutclass micro lander to our frontier-class MX–9 supporting lunar 

sample return. We have contracted for up to five launches from 

Rocket Lab USA aboard their electron rocket, which achieved a remarkable level of success during its maiden flight last May, and we 

expect to become operational later this year. Our first lunar scout 

mission in 2018 will utilize the electron together with our MX–1E 
24 

explorer to deliver a diverse manifest of scientific and commercial 

payloads to the lunar surface. This will be followed by expanded capabilities and ongoing missions. Our manifest is fully booked for 

our maiden mission, and we will be offering payload accommodations on our future ongoing missions planned at the rate of about 

one per year, but we are also prepared to scale up our systems and 

increase our flight rate to meet rising market demand and opportunity. 

We have a big vision but it wouldn’t be possible without the help 

we received from NASA. Moon Express has been honored to be 

partnered with NASA since the inception of our company through 

reimbursable Space Act agreements with both NASA Ames and 

Marshall Spaceflight Center. We were able to invest in and make 

use of NASA lunar lander test vehicles that allowed us to advance 

our own spacecraft control software. In 2014, we were selected as 

one of three industry partners with NASA for the Lunar CATALYST program established to spur commercial cargo transportation 

capabilities to the surface of the Moon. Supported by Lunar CATALYST and the Kennedy Space Center, we conducted test flights of 

our own lunar lander test vehicle at the shuttle landing facility, beginning a long-term collaboration with KFC, and that continues 

today. Thanks to our partnership with NASA, we’re well on our 

way to building our maiden launch mission next year, which is in 

various stages of fabrication, assembly and test. 

In the big picture, it’s been 45 years since the United States left 

the surface of the Moon to the legacy of Apollo and a generation 

past. Moon Express is working to reopen the American frontier and 

the Moon and redefine what is possible for new generations. 

The American flag is returning to the surface of the Moon next 

year, not because of a government program but because of private 

sector investments into low-cost rockets and smart robotic explorers that are collapsing the cost of lunar access. Together, we will 

begin a new democratized program to make the Moon accessible to 

entrepreneurs. 

We are at the cusp of a glorious adventure. We aspire to the 

stars. Mars beckons as a second home for humanity, and the Moon 

is our gateway. 

Thank you for the time and the opportunity to present this testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Richards follows:] 
25 

Statement of Robert (Bob) Richards 

Founder and CEO, Moon Express, Inc. 

before the 

United States House of Representatives' 

Committee on Science, Space and Technology 

Subcommittee on Space Hearing 

on: 

Private Sector lunar Exploration 

Thursday, September 7, 2017 

Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Bera, and members of the Subcommittee: It is an honor to be invited 

to speak with you today about the efforts of U.S. commercial space industry in pioneering new business 

models for lunar exploration and development. 

Only a few decades ago, Earth orbit was an economic frontier and the singular domain of government 

space agencies. Today, private sector satellites generate billions of dollars of commerce annually in a 

mature, well established economic sphere that impacts our everyday lives and has immeasurably 

improved life on Earth. Now commerce looks beyond Earth orbit to the lunar frontier, which has also 

been the realm of governments, but over the last decade, a combination of exponential technology 

advance and private space investment has brought the Moon within reach of the commercial sector. 

The Moon is Earth's 8th continent, a new frontier for humanity with precious resources that can bring 

enormous benefits to life on Earth and our future in space. Private sector entrepreneurship will help 

expand our economic sphere to the Moon and create new opportunities for business markets to arise 

supporting science, exploration and discovery, but also horizons of infinite opportunity for creative 

entrepreneurs to unlock the energy and resources of a whole new world. 

PERSONALJOURNEY 

My personal journey has been vested in creating international institutions and commercial space 

enterprises driven by the vision of a peaceful and prosperous spacefaring civilization. Along this journey, 

I co-founded the International Space University and more recently, Singularity University, to help inspire 

and educate new generations of leaders to take on bold new challenges of space exploration while 

caring for our home planet and each other. 
26 

2 

I have also had the honor of working with NASA on the successful landing of a robotic spacecraft on the 

north pole of Mars, a scientific mission called Phoenix that added to our understanding of the Red 

Planet, and with the U.S. Air Force Advanced Research Lab on the demonstration of technologies in 

Earth orbit that enabled new capabilities in autonomous rendezvous and proximity maneuvers. 

MOON EXPRESS 

Today, I address you as Founder and CEO of Moon Express, a privately funded commercial space 

company created to seek and unlock the resources of the Moon through a progressive series of 

commercial robotic missions, starting with our maiden voyage scheduled to launch next year. 

I founded Moon Express with "dotcom" pioneers Naveen Jain and Barney Pel! in 2010. We are a Silicon 

Valley born and backed enterprise, with investors ranging from billionaires to venture funds to 

celebrities. We began our life at the NASA Ames Research Park in Mountain View, California, and in 2015 

relocated to Cape Canaveral on Florida's Space Coast, where we are currently refurbishing the historic 

Launch Complexes 17 and 18 for our spacecraft engineering, test and mission control facilities. 

THE MOON- OUR EIGHTH CONTINENT 

The Moon is a new world with a total landmass approximating North and South America combined. The 

Moon has only been reached by government superpowers, but new advances in technology are bringing 

the Moon within reach of the private sector. Next year Moon Express' robotic explorers will set sail to 

Earth's 8th continent, seeking new opportunities for commerce, knowledge and adventure. 

RESOURCES FOR HUMANITY 

Like the Earth, the Moon has been enriched with vast resources through billions of years of 

bombardment by asteroids and comets. Unlike the Earth, these resources are largely on or near the 

lunar surface, and therefore relatively accessible. Moon Express is blazing a trail to the Moon to seek 

and harvest these resources to support a new space renaissance, where economic trade between 

countries will eventually become trade between worlds. All Moon Express expeditions will prospect for 

materials on the Moon as candidates for economic development and in-situ resource utilization. 

WATER 

One of the greatest practical space discoveries of our generation is the presence of vast quantities of 

water on the Moon, verified by NASA in 2009. Water (H 20) not only supports life but its constituents, 

hydrogen and oxygen, are energetic and clean rocket fuel. The discovery of water on the Moon is a 

game changer, not just for the economic viability of lunar resources, but for the economics of humans 

reaching Mars and other deep space destinations. Water is the oil of the solar system, and the Moon 

can become a gas station in the sky to fuel human space exploration, development and settlement of 

the solar system. Moon Express will begin prospecting for water resources on the Moon with its very 

first expedition. 

House Testimony- Robert (Bob) Richards September 7, 2017 
27 

3 

OUR LONG-TIME PARTNERSHIP WITH NASA 

Moon Express has been honored to partner with NASA since the inception of our company. In 2010, we 

entered into a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with NASA Ames Research Center that allowed us to 

invest private dollars into the refurbishment and recommissioning of NASA's Hover Test Vehicle (HTV) 

and test facility, where we got our lunar lander training wheels and advanced our spacecraft control 

software. That same year we won our first data purchase contract from NASA Headquarters under the 

Innovation Lunar Demonstrations Data program. 

In 2012 we entered into a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center 

allowing us to invest in access to the 'Mighty Eagle' lander test vehicle. With NASA's support, we 

successfully conducted the first free flight demonstrations of our autonomous spacecraft software on 

the Mighty Eagle in Huntsville in 2013, validating our Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) flight 

software and proving the value of public-private partnerships for lunar capabilities. In 2014 we were 

selected as one of three industry partners for NASA's lunar CATALYST program, established to spur 

commercial cargo transportation capabilities to the surface of the Moon. later that year, supported by 

lunar CATALYST, we conducted test flights of our own lander test vehicle at the Kennedy Space Center 

Shuttle landing Facility, beginning a long-term collaboration with KSC, which continues today. In 2015, 

thanks to the welcoming support of Kennedy Space Center, Space Florida and the U.S. Air Force's 4S'h 

Space Wing, we relocated and consolidated our staff and company operations to the Space Coast, where 

we have licensed the historic Cape Canaveral launch complexes 17 and 18 from the U.S. Air Force as our 

new home. We are currently investing in the reconditioning and construction of these historic facilities 

to support our spacecraft development, test and mission operations. 

CURRENT ACTIVITIES 

We are currently building toward our maiden lunar mission next year, with our spacecraft systems in 

various stages offabrication, assembly and test. Thanks to lunar CATALYST, we have access to NASA 

facilities to test and validate our spacecraft propulsion, structures and avionics. We have contracted for 

up to five launches from Rocket lab USA aboard their Electron rocket, which achieved a remarkable 

level of success during its maiden flight last May, and we expect to become operational later this year. 

On July 12, just down the hall from this hearing room, we unveiled our spacecraft architecture and 

announced our first three lunar expeditions, beginning with an equatorial landing next year, a south 

pole flight in 2019, and a sample return in 2020, with a goal of proving out the technologies and legal 

premise of the first privately obtained lunar soil and rocks. Our MX family of robotic spacecraft are 

designed to collapse the cost of access to the Moon, introduce a new commercial paradigm for 

government missions, democratize lunar research and exploration, and blaze the trail for commercial 

space transportation and exploration beyond Earth's orbit. 

Our first expedition will utilize our MX-lE robotic explorer to deliver a diverse manifest of scientific and 

commercial payloads to the lunar surface. Our customers forth is mission include the International lunar 

Observatory Association, the University of Maryland, The National laboratories of Frascati, Celestis and 

Go ogle. 

House Testimony- Robert {Bob) Richards September 7, 2017 
28 

4 

'MISSION APPROVAL' FOR THE lsr PRIVATE VENTURE TO THE MOON 

On July 20, 2016, Moon Express become the first private company to receive authorization from the U.S. 

government for a private mission beyond Earth orbit and to the Moon, establishing a historic precedent 

of national and commercial compliance with the terms of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST). This was in 

fact the first time in history that any government signatory to the OST exercised its rights and 

obligations to formally authorize and supervise a commercial entity to fly a mission beyond Earth orbit. 

After recognizing the absence of any prescribed process or clarity of regulatory authority for our private 

lunar activities in 2015, we proposed a 'Mission Approval' framework to the U.S. government, intended 

as an interim 'patch' that built on the existing payload review process of the Federal Aviation 

Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST) with a series of additional 

'voluntary disclosures' intended to help satisfy U.S. obligations under the OST, including covenants of 

non-interference with domestic or foreign activities or heritage sites. After several months of socializing 

our proposal with the White House, Department of State, FAA, NASA, NOAA, Department of Defense, 

and other involved federal agencies, our proposal was accepted. 

While thankful for the positive determination that allowed us to solidify our private financing and move 

forward with our plans, I note that our 'Mission Approval' was qualified as a "one-time only" 

authorization that does not extend to future missions by Moon Express or similar missions from other 

entities. For this reason, I am very pleased that this Committee has developed and marked up the 

American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act, which provides an excellent "light touch" to OST Article 

VI compliance. 

EXPANDING CAPABILITIES WITH MULTIPLE EXPEDITIONS 

Following our initial "Lunar Scout" expedition next year, we will offer payload accommodations on 

future voyages, planned at the rate of one per year. But we can also scale up and increase the frequency 

of our lunar flights to meet market demand and opportunity. 

Our second expedition in 2019, "Lunar Outpost", will enable the first commercial presence and 

exploration of the lunar South Pole. It may in fact be the first-ever soft-landing at a lunar pole. The 

primary goals of this mission are to set up the first lunar research outpost at a "peak of eternal light", 

prospect for water and useful minerals, and accommodate a variety of research instruments for our 

expedition partners. 

Our third expedition, "Harvest Moon", will take place by 2020 and includes the first commercial sample 

return, beginning our business phase of lunar resource prospecting and harvesting. The samples brought 

back will be the only privately obtained lunar materials on Earth, and will be used to benefit science as 

well as commercial purposes. 

House Testimony- Robert {Bob} Richards September 7, 2017 
29 

5 

OUR VISION: OPENING THE LUNAR FRONTIER- FOR ALL OF US 

Our vision is to open the lunar frontier with turn-key payload, data and services for missions to the 

Moon for a wide range of customers globally, including governments, NGO's, commercial enterprises, 

universities, and consumers. 

We have developed a family of flexible, scalable robotic explorers that can reach the Moon and other 

solar system destinations from Earth orbit. The MX spacecraft architecture supports multiple 

applications, including delivery of scientific and commercial payloads to the Moon at low cost using a 

rides hare model, or charter science or commercial expeditions to distant worlds. 

Our MX robotic explorer spacecraft are optimized for launch on existing and emergent rocket systems: 

MX-1: A single stage spacecraft capable of delivering up to 30kg to the lunar surface. 

MX-2: A dual-stage spacecraft that doubles the capability of the MX-1 and can reach the moons of Mars. 

MX-5: A cis-lunar workhorse spacecraft that can deliver up to 150kg to lunar orbit or SOkg to the 

surface. 

MX-9: A lunar prospector/harvester that can deliver up to SOOkg to the lunar surface, including an 

embedded MX-1R spacecraft that can launch from the lunar surface and return lunar samples to Earth. 

WHAT CONGRESS CAN TO DO HELP 

To assure freedom of enterprise beyond Earth orbit, industry needs a regulatory framework that meets 

U.S. obligations under the Outer Space Treaty with maximum certainty and minimal regulatory burden. 

I would recommend that Congress support a process that focuses and streamlines the regulatory 

framework, limits the government's role to a light touch, promotes American innovation and 

investment, and satisfies international obligations. One possible approach is a "presumed authorization 

within boundary conditions", where U.S. policy would de facto allow non-traditional space activity in or 

beyond Earth orbit, provided there is: 

1) no demonstrable meaningful negative impact on national security 

2) no harmful interference with existing space infrastructure or activities 

3) no breach to U.S. obligations under international treaties 

I am hopeful that Congress and the Administration, in consultation with industry, can apply principles 

conducive to freedom of enterprise in space for companies like us whose success will result in the 

expansion of U.S. commercial space activity to the Moon and beyond. Enacting H.R. 2809, or something 

very like it, would go a long way to help business happen off-planet. 

House Testimony- Robert (Bob) Richards September7, 2017 
30 

6 

NEXT STEPS: A PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP WITH NASA 

As I have illustrated before, NASA has been an essential partner to Moon Express, providing access to 

expertise and technologies supporting our lunar lander development. We have benefitted from many 

Space Act Agreements with NASA centers that allowed us to learn from the agency and jointly develop 

new capabilities based on historic ones. Most of our early partnerships with NASA involved us paying 

NASA for access to technologies and facilities, but that has evolved in recent years into the use of noexchange of funds Space Act Agreements that provide mutual value. In particular, NASA's Lunar Cargo 

Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (Lunar CATALYST) program has provided us significant 

access to NASA technologies, facilities, and expertise which have accelerated our first few expeditions, 

offering exactly the kinds of capability NASA wanted to see arise. 

As a next step, we would like to see NASA transition from a partner-technology developer to a partnercustomer, beginning with the purchase of cargo services from us for delivery of science and exploration 

instruments to the Moon. Extending the public-private partnership model of commercial transportation 

services beyond Earth orbit will enable new growth in U.S. industrial capacity and capability while 

introducing the economics of private sector competitive innovation to deep space and planetary 

exploration. 

Moon Express is flying spacecraft to the Moon next year. This means we can offer NASA an affordable 

way to carry small American experiments back to the Moon within this coming budget year. All of our 

development has been privately funded and we don't need a major public-private partnership program 

to fund our initial lander. Since we have a family of landers based on our core MX-1 spacecraft, we can 

offer NASA ongoing scalable capabilities on a fixed-price, milestone-based pay-for-services basis. 

For NASA and U.S. lunar scientists to avail themselves of this near-term American return to the Moon, 

Congress would need to appropriate the money to fund experiments and purchase of cargo services 

from us. So our top priority request to enable the next step in our NASA lunar partnership would be for 

NASA to have the money set aside to actually buy lunar delivery services from the commercial 

marketplace. 

If NASA wants Moon Express to accelerate the development of our family of landers, and perhaps grow 

our capabilities beyond our initial plans, we are ready and able to ramp up our current Lunar CATALYST 

partnership. Given how far we have come with private investments and no-exchange-of-funds Space 

Act Agreements, some competitively-awarded cost-sharing would help justify accelerating our 

investments into growing our capabilities to offer low cost lunar mission services that would advance 

NASA's interests and serve the taxpayers well. 

Throughout history, varying forms of public private partnerships have been an effective approach to 

opening a new frontier. Recently, U.S. implementation of Commercial Orbital Transportation Services 

(COTS), Commercial Resupply Services (CRS), and Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) programs 

have demonstrated that private sector entrepreneurial approaches and investments can help NASA 

dollars go farther. Given similar program commitments for lunar mission and cargo delivery services, we 

can invest in solutions to fit NASA's needs. As NASA continues to flesh out its plans for human 

exploration of cis-lunar space and eventually Mars, commercial companies like Moon Express can 

complement mainstream NASA efforts like Orion and SLS and a Deep Space Gateway. 

House Testimony- Robert (Bob) Richards September 7, 2017 
31 

7 

THE BIG PICTURE: Strategic commercial partnerships supporting deep space and NASA astronauts 

The challenge of securing humanity's future through our expansion into space and ultimately becoming 

a multi-world species is both necessary and noble. But it's not just about boldly going; it's about boldly 

staying. To go to space to stay, it has to pay. While NASA pushes the boundaries of human knowledge 

and experience to new frontiers, partnerships with the private sector can help ensure that the engines 

of human imagination and discovery that drive forward those new frontiers are augmented by the 

engines of entrepreneurship and commerce that help make them permanent. 

As a country built on the foundations of Earth's frontiers, the United States stands unique in all the 

world with the opportunity to focus the power of its entrepreneurial history and enterprising vision to 

open the lunar frontier to national, international and private sector interests, and in so doing, setting 

the standards of a freedom of enterprise supporting a peaceful, prosperous and boundless future for all 

humanity. Other countries have aggressive lunar programs underway with declared goals of resource 

exploitation and settlement that could eclipse American leadership, opportunity and security. 

It's been 45 years since the United States left the surface of the Moon to the legacy of Apollo and a 

generation past. Moon Express is working to reopen the American frontier on the Moon and redefine 

what is possible for new generations. 

The American flag is returning to the surface of the Moon next year, not because of a government 

program, but because of private sector investments into low cost rockets and smart, low cost robotic 

explorers that are collapsing the cost of lunar access. Together we will begin a new democratized 

paradigm of lunar exploration and make the Moon accessible to other entrepreneurs. 

We are at the cusp of a glorious adventure, an epoch of evolution into space perhaps as significant as 

the evolution of life from the oceans onto land. One day, not long from now, a new generation will look 

up and see lights on the Moon, and know that they are members of a mutiworld species. 

For the last half century, the United States has led the world in magnificent robotic and human 

achievements in space. The opportunity is at hand to continue that leadership with a focused and 

committed American return the Moon, this time to stay. 

We aspire to the stars. Mars beckons as a second home for humanity. The Moon is our gateway. 

Thank you for your time and the opportunity to present this testimony. 

### 

House Testimony- Robert (Bob) Richards September 7, 2017 
32 

I I I 

COMMERCIAl lUNAR ROBOTIC EXPLORATION SYSTEMS 

OVERVIEW 

On July 12, 2017, Moon Express unveiled its exploration architecture, including plans to 

establish the world's first permanent lunar outpost at the South Pole of the Moon by 2020. The 

company's robotic explorers are flexible, scalable platforms that will help reopen the American 

frontier on the Moon, conduct prospecting and sample return operations, and support lunar 

science, exploration and commerce. 

On July 20, 2016, Moon Express became the first company to receive U.S. government 

approval to send a robotic spacecraft beyond traditional Earth orbit and to the Moon. This was 

the first time in history that any government signatory to the Outer Space Treaty exercised its 

rights and obligations to formally authorize and supervise a commercial entity to fly a mission 

beyond Earth orbit. 

MX FAMILY OF ROBOTIC EXPLORERS 

Our MX family of flexible, scalable robotic explorers can reach the Moon and other solar system 

destinations from Earth orbit. 

Configurable to existing and emerging launch systems, the MX spacecraft architecture supports 

multiple applications, including delivery of scientific and commercial payloads to the Moon at !ow 

cost using a rides hare model, or charter science expeditions to distant worlds. 

August2017 © Moon Express, lnc. 
33 

2 

COMMERCIAL LUNAR EXPEDITIONS 

Moon Express is working toward three maiden robotic missions to the Moon by 2020. Our ongoing expeditions to the Moon with robotic explorers will collapse the cost of lunar access and 

enable new markets and opportunities to arise, bringing the Moon within reach by creating low 

cost frequent opportunities for democratized lunar exploration by scientists, researchers, 

students, and everyday people. Our goal is to open the lunar frontier for all of us, ultimately 

expanding Earth's economic and social spheres to our 8th continent, the Moon. 

EXPEDITION ONE: LUNAR SCOUT (MX-2: 2018) 

THE 1ST COMMERCIAL VOYAGE TO THE MOON 

The Lunar Scout expedition will be the first commercial voyage to the Moon. This historic 

expedition will demonstrate the cost effectiveness of entrepreneurial approaches to 

space exploration, carrying a diverse manifest of payloads including the International 

Lunar Observatory, "Moonlight" by the INFN National Laboratories of Frascati and the 

University of Maryland, a Celestis memorial flight. Following completion of operations 

supporting our Lunar Scout expedition partners, we will attempt to win the $20M Google 

Lunar XPRIZE. 

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/XJEkqpcu34U 

EXPEDITION TWO: LUNAR OUTPOST (MX-2: 2019) 

THE 1ST COMMERCIAL SOUTH POLE EXPEDITION 

The Lunar Outpost expedition will enable the first commercial presence and exploration 

of the lunar South Pole. The poles of the Moon have concentrations of water and other 

valuable resources, as well as "peaks of eternal light" where permanent sunshine and 

direct continuous communication with Earth is possible. The primary goals of this 

mission are to set up the first lunar research outpost, prospect for water and useful 

minerals, and accommodate a variety of research instruments for our expedition 

partners. 

VIDEO: https:l/youtu.be/KGWmDGqlldk 

EXPEDITION THREE: HARVEST MOON (MX-9: 2020) 

THE 1ST COMMERCIAL LUNAR SAMPLE RETURN 

The Harvest Moon expedition will take place by 2020 and includes the first commercial 

sample return mission, which also begins the business phase of lunar resource 

prospecting. The lunar samples brought back will be the only privately owned Moon 

materials on Earth, and will be used to benefit science as well as commercial purposes. 

VIDEO: https:llyoutu.belgXMr-P7KDuU 

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT: www.moonexpress.com 

September 2017 © Moon Express, Inc. 
34 

BlO- ROBERT (BOB) RICHARDS 

Robert (Bob) Richards is a space entrepreneur and 

futurist. He is a Co-Founder of the International Space 

University, Singularity University, SEDS, the Space 

Generation Foundation and Moon Express, Inc. a space 

transportation and lunar resources company located at 

Cape Canaveral, where he is currently serves as 

President and CEO. Bob chairs the Space Commerce 

Committee of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, 

serves on the board of the Space Foundation, and is a 

member of the International Institute of Space Law. As 

Director of the Optech Space Division from 2002-2009, Bob led the company's technology into 

orbit in 2004 and to the surface of Mars in 2007 aboard the NASA Phoenix Lander, making the 

first discovery of falling Martian snow. Bob studied aerospace and industrial engineering at 

Ryerson University; physics and astronomy at the University of Toronto; and space science at 

Cornell University where he became special assistant to Carl Sagan. Bob is an evangelist of the 

"NewSpace" movement and has been a catalyst for a number of commercial space ventures. 

He is the recipient of the K.E. Tsiolkovski Medal 1995), the Space Frontier "Vision to 

Reality" Award (USA, 1994), the Arthur C. Commendation (Sri Lanka, 1990) and 

Aviation & Space Technology Laurel (USA, 1988). He is a contributing author of "Blueprint for 

Space" (Smithsonian Institution 1992); "Return to the Moon" (Apogee Books 2005} and "The 

Farthest Shore" (ISU Press 2009}. In 2005 Bob received a Doctorate of Space Achievement 

(honoris causa) from the International Space University for "distinguished accomplishments in 

support of humanity's exploration and use of space." 

t @Bob_Richards 

w robertdrichards.com 
35 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Richards. 

I now recognize Mr. Thornton for five minutes to present your 

testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. JOHN THORNTON, 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

ASTROBOTIC TECHNOLOGY, INC. 

Mr. THORNTON. Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Bera, and 

Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 

discuss our nation’s future on the Moon. 

Incredibly, America has not returned to the lunar surface since 

the Apollo program ended in 1972. This has put our nation at a 

disadvantage as other nations like China have landed increasingly 

ambitious robotic missions on the surface of the Moon. 

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing, our 

nation has a unique opportunity to answer a growing global demand for a reliable, proven means to access the lunar surface. 

Some nations are beginning to fly with the Chinese but it’s not too 

late. By supporting our nation’s entrepreneurs, America can once 

again lead the world back to the Moon. 

Thankfully, with the strong technical support of NASA, especially through the leadership of Jason Crusan’s AES Office, American industry is restoring access to the Moon with small robotic 

lunar landers. 

Founded in the Rust Belt city of Pittsburgh in 2007, Astrobotic 

is leading the way to reestablish American access to the Moon with 

small-scale cargo delivery. We have assembled a world-class team 

of partners including NASA, United Launch Alliance, Airbus, and 

DHL. Together, we are building the Peregrine lunar lander, a privately developed spacecraft capable of delivering up to 265 kilograms of cargo to the Moon. In August, I celebrated ten years of 

building Astrobotic and the lunar market. Today, I am proud to say 

that Astrobotic is leading the world in lunar sales and market development with 11 deals representing six nations and a lunar pipeline of over 115 deals worth more than $1.8 billion. Astrobotic is 

flying its first mission to the Moon in 2019, the 50th anniversary 

of the Apollo 11 landing. 

Peregrine is not a precursor or a demonstration. It is right-sized 

from the beginning to address the existing lunar market. At the 

historic price of $1.2 million per kilogram, Peregrine enables activities like resource development, scientific investigation, technology 

demonstration, and exploration. 

The future is bright but tenuous for sustainable commercial 

lunar cargo delivery. The government would be wise to leverage 

and augment existing international lunar payload demand rather 

than overwhelm it with an oversupply of large landers that have 

no sustaining commercial demand for the foreseeable future. 

Small landers like Peregrine stand ready to support upcoming 

NASA crewed exploration missions on SLS Orion to the deep space 

gateway by enabling telerobotic access to the surface. Small lander 

missions are our first step toward one day reestablishing human 

presence on the Moon and launching a cislunar off-world economy. 

Much of Astrobotic’s market progress is owed to a proven technical track record and world-class partnerships. For instance, Air-
36 

bus is providing engineering support and expertise from ESA programs. Throughout partnership with United Launch Alliance, we 

will launch as a secondary payload from Cape Canaveral on America’s reliable Atlas V launch vehicle, continuing a proud history of 

successful lunar missions including LRO, LCROSS and GRAIL. 

NASA is providing access to their engineers and facilities 

through the highly successful Lunar CATALYST program, and we 

are encouraged by steps NASA has taken this year including 

issuing RFIs for small lunar payloads and lander services. With 

CATALYST insight into our service, Astrobotic believes now is the 

time for NASA to join our payload manifest. 

We appreciate the leadership of House CJS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Culberson, Ranking Member Serrano, and 

Members of the Committee in providing $30 million in the fiscal 

year 2018 appropriations bill for a small robotic lunar lander demonstration mission. We are hopeful the Senate will follow the 

House’s lead, and this funding will be included in a final omnibus, 

which could allow NASA to send payloads to the Moon. We encourage this Committee to lend its full support for this program in the 

appropriations process this fall. 

As this Committee plans for the next NASA authorization, we 

urge you to authorize a frontier-class lander services program for 

small lunar landers within the launch services program similar to 

the Venture-class program. This would provide a contractual mechanism for NASA to easily purchase lunar payload services. 

Mr. Chairman, we are proud to be leading the Moon shot from 

America’s Rust Belt. This is a special moment for our company, our 

industry, our region, and our nation. Small lander services like 

Astrobotic have a proven market with sales, world-class partners, 

and credible spacecraft. With support from Congress, we can ensure American lunar market leadership and NASA’s return to the 

Moon. 

I look forward to any questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thornton follows:] 
37 

Statement of Mr. John Thornton, 

Chief Executive Officer, 

Astrohotic Technology, lnc. 

before the 

Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Subcommittee on Space 

U.S. House of Representatives 

September 6, 2017 

Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Bera, and Members of the Subcommittee: thank you for the 

opportunity to appear today to discuss our nation's fl!ture on the Moon. Incredibly, America has not had 

access to the lnnar surface since the Apollo Program ended in 1972. This has put the nation at a 

disadvantage in science, exploration, and commercial activities, as other nations like China have landed 

increasingly ambitious robotic missions to the surface of the Moon. No doubt these developments weigh 

heavily in the minds of international governments, research instihrtions, and commercial customers as 

they decide whom to partner with to achieve their goals in space exploration and commerce. 

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Apollo ll landing in 2019, it is imperative that we signal to 

the world that America intends to once again lead on the lunar surface. This is especially important as the 

world increasingly looks to new lunar frontiers like the Moon's far side and poles. Thankfully, American 

industry, with the strong technical support and cooperation ofNASA, is restoring access to the lunar 

surface with affordable small robotic landers that provide significant capability for the and 

other customers. American has taken the initiative to develop these small 

capabilities with the majority from non-NASA sources. In the case of our company, 

Astrobotic, we have stood as a private company !0-ycars now, generating achral revenues from our 

11-non-NASA deals. We have bnilt a team of world-class partners, including Airbus DS and ULA, who 

have joiued our mission because we have demonstrated a credible approach to building a spacecraft that 

can deliver for our customers. 

Re-establishing American Access to the Moon with Small Landers 

Founded in the Rust Belt in 2007, Astrobotic is one such company leading the way to re-establish 

American access to the Moon with small robotic lander Astrobotic is building the Peregrine 

Lunar Lander, a privately developed spacecraft capable hundreds of kilograms to the Moon. 

Peregrine will enable robotic access to the Moon for companies, governments, and universities starting in 

2019, for the historically low price of$1.2 million per kilogram. 

Astrobotic is poised to provide a 

critical capability to the burgeoning 

lnnar payload delivery market. The 

Moon offers untold opporhmities for 

resource development, scientific 

investigation, technology 

demonstration, and exploration 

advancement. With Peregrine, 

Astrobotic offers a reliable, low-cost 

cargo delivery service that allows 

organizations around the world to 

Figure 1: Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander 
38 

pursue these opportunities. Each Peregrine mission will deliver a diverse collection of payload types on a 

single flight to the Moon. With this end-to-end service, payload customers arc empowered to 

build their own payloads, and integrate them onto our Astrobotic's standard interfaces. Once 

Peregrine lands on the Moon, the vehicle provides power and communications bandwidth to our payloads 

for the operation of their own missions on the surface. 

With this approach, companies and governments arc no longer required to build their own launch 

vehicles, landers, or other costly infrastmcture to send and operate missions to the Moon, nor are they 

burdened with complicated bilateral or multilateral intemational agreements to make a mission possible. 

Instead, payload customers can buy just the service they need on Peregrine and make their lunar 

ambitions a reality faster and cheaper than ever before. 

Astrobotic's first delivery mission will be a key demonstration of service for our payload customers. 

Peregrine will fly its first mission as a shared, secondary payload on the Atlas V launch vehicle, but on 

fnture missions two Peregrine landers could fly together as a primary payload to make deliveries at 

multiple lunar locations on a single flight Astrobotic will lannch a mission to the Moon once 

per year, creating a regular cadence of low cost missions to the Moon for world's space agencies and 

companies. 

Serving the Market for Small Lander Services to the Moon 

To date, Astrobotic has 11 deals in 

place from companies, governments, 

and nonprofits for Peregrine's first 

mission to the Moon. The manifest 

includes a payload reservation from the 

Agencia Espacial Mexicana, or AEM, 

the Mexican Space Agency. AEM will 

fly the first Latin American payload to 

the Moon on board Peregrine. They 

will join 6 other nations represented on 

our first mission: the United States, 

Mexico, the United Kingdom, 

Germany, and Hungary. The 

ASTROBOTIC MISSION ONE: 

Figure 2: Astrobotic's Payload Manifest to fly on the Peregrine Lunar Lander 

diverse international nature of Astrobotic's first mission manifest demonstrates a global pent up demand 

for lunar services. The AEM reservation to deliver a Mexican payload to the Moon is a model Astrobotic 

believes will he replicated repeatedly by other agencies around the world. Many space agencies 

have the capability to build groundbreaking that could advance the state of the art in a variety of 

fields; they just need a low cost transportation service to deliver them. 

The current Mission One manifest includes contracts to carry small lunar rovers, marketing and time 

capsule artifacts, technology demonstrators, and memorial cremains. Astrobotic's most recent payload 

contract, which was signed with Atlas Space at the 2017 Paris Air Show, will be a laser 

communications terminal that demonstrates the optical communications capability on the lunar 

surface. Payload customers on board our mission will be able to take advantage of this breakthrough 

gigabit per second bandwidth, which will enable high definition streaming video. Laser communication 

services on the Moon is emblematic of the new era on the Moon made possible by small lander services 

like Astrobotic. 

ln addition to our existing payload deals, Astrobotic has developed a sales pipeline of 115 deals, valued at 

more than $1 billion. This pipeline exists today even bettlre our tirst flight to the Moon, and reflects the 

2 
39 

A 5 T R 0 BOT I C 

rapidly growing interest in the Moon. Our understanding of the Moon and the opportunities it holds for 

science, exploration, and commerce has changed dramatically since the Apollo landings. For instance, 

just a few years ago scientists from Japan discovered that the Moon has cave-like structures nnder the 

surface called lava h1bes with entrances on the lunar surface known as skylights. Astrobotic has 

customers that plan to send autonomous rovers into these features to determine the suitability oflava 

tubes for future human habitation. With natural protection from radiation, meteorites, and thermal 

variance, lava tubes hold great potential as a location for long-term human settlements on the Moon. 

Rovers that peer inside lava tubes could also carry out scientific measurements of the cave walls that were 

at one time exposed to solar winds over billions of years. These measurements could lead to new insights 

in solar history. 

Lava tubes are an exciting new destination for activity, and similarly the Moon's far side is also a 

previously untapped location for exploration and discovery. All of the Apollo missions landed at the 

"front side" of the Moon, and were never able to take advantage of the "radio quiet zone" of the Moon, 

which blocks interfering radio waves from Earth. Some Astrobotic customers seek to place the first-ever 

telescopes in cislunar space, which would allow for observations of deep space with almost no radio 

interference from Earth. 

In addition to landing and operating at new lunar sites, some Astrobotic customers plan to build on the 

progress of past Apollo experiments. For instance, some plan to place retroreflector mirrors on the lunar 

surface to further triangulate the distance from the Earth to the Moon, and carry out experiments in 

relativity physics. Newly placed retrorefleetors would compliment the ones left behind by Apollo. 

Others are looking to deploy seismometers and other geophysical instmments all over the surface to better 

understand the nature of the Moon as a planetary body, and augment instruments left behind in just a few 

locations by Apollo. Astrobotic also has payload customers that plan to trail blaze new experiments not 

previously seen during Apollo, such as the first plant growth experiments on a planetary body. Those 

experiments would be the first step toward growing food on other planets, and unlike anything done in the 

1960s or 70s. 

Making Use of Lunar Water Ice 

When the Apollo program left the Moon for the final time, we thought the Moon was a dry and barren 

place. Today our understanding of the Moon is dramatically different, as more recent missions like 

NASA's LCROSS revealed the Moon to be a source of water ice. Thanks to LCROSS, we now know the 

Moon's polar cold traps have been collecting water from icy comet impacts for billions of years. In fact, 

some believe that there are 'Great Lakes' worth of water at the poles of the Moon. Water ice on the 

Moon holds enormous potential for deep space human exploration. 

Currently the physics of the rocket equation makes it cost prohibitive for most public and private 

activities to take place beyond Earth orbit today. Anywhere between 80-95% of a rocket's mass is spent 

on just the propellant needed to reach Earth orbit. 1 This fuel problem in space breaks most business cases 

beyond Earth orbit, and cripples the plans of space agencies around the world. Hydrogen and oxygen arc 

key propellants that can power missions beyond Earth orbit, and they can be extracted from water ice. 

Based on prior discoveries by spacecraft like LCROSS, significant quantities of water ice have been 

definitively shown to exist at the Moon's poles 2 Thus it is possible to extract and utilize the fuel already 

at the lnnar surface rather than ship it from Earth, which is costly. 

1 https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html 

2 https://www.space.com/7530-significant-amount-water-Moon.html 

3 
40 

ASTROBOTIC 

fi 

Utilizing fuel derived from lunar water ice, rather than shipping it from Earth could dramatically improve 

the economics of space activity at the Moon and beyond. For instance, one MIT study found the cost of a 

human mission to Mars could be reduced by as much as 68% if fuel from the Moon were used, rather than 

terrestrially-based fuel hauled from Earth3 All of this water ice exists at the poles of the Moon, which is 

why there is so much recent international interest in the lunar poles, including from the Chinese. Make no 

mistake; extracting water ice from the Moon will be a technically challenging endeavor that will require 

substantial research and development, technology demonstrations, and plain hard work and persistence 

over many years. Yet the promise oflunar water ice for our future in space is too exciting to ignore, and 

our customer pipeline shares this view. 

With a capable lander like Peregrine, Astrobotic stands ready to serve the growing interest in the lunar 

poles with low cost lunar transportation. Small lander services like Astrobotic are well suited to begin the 

first step of landing and operating at the poles, obtaining ground truth of water ice in the Moon's cold 

traps, and demonstrating initial techniques to harvest water. Landing and successfully operating at these 

sites will be the first step toward realizing the promise of lunar water ice for deep space exploration. 

It is important to recognize now that as space activities evolve, valuable resources at the Moon could be 

of strategic interest to the United States in just a few year short years, and U.S. commercial companies 

like Astrobotic will be best positioned to capture this value for the nation. Policymakers would be wise to 

recognize that our future plans for human exploration and other space activities beyond Earth could be 

substantially altered or supported by our access to this lunar water ice. 

Building World Class Partnerships 

Part of what makes Astrobotic's Peregrine Lander a credible and capable program is the world-class 

partners who have stood with us, and assisted our company as we progress toward flight. Not only are the 

following partners making irreplaceable contributions toward our mission, their statements of support 

indicate the maturity of our program and our approach. Several of them are pillars of the space 

community and do not lend the support of their brand lightly. 

NASA has been an outstanding partner through the Lunar CATALYST program, which provides 

Astrobotic access to some of the best spacecraft engineers and facilities in the world, as part of NASA's 

effort to encourage the development of U.S. commercial robotic lunar lander capabilities. Astrobotic 

applauds the leadership of the Advanced Exploration Systems division within the Human Exploration and 

Operation (HEO) Mission Directorate for instituting and supporting CATALYST over the last three fiscal 

years. We also applaud NASA REO's recent Request for Infom1ation (RFI) seeking infonnation on the 

availability of small payloads that could be delivered to the Moon using U.S. commercial lunar cargo 

transportation service providers, as well as NASA's joint RFI seeking information on Lunar Surface 

Cargo Transportation Services from the Science Mission Directorate with support from the HEO Mission 

Directorate and the Space Technology Mission Directorate. Astrobotic believes the deep insights into 

programs like ours through the multi-year CATALYST experience now enable NASA to move beyond 

these RFis, and make use of our services for their agency's goals in the immediate near term. 

United Launch Alliance is partnering with Astrobotic to launch Peregrine as a secondary payload on an 

Atlas V launch in late 2019. ULA has been an excellent partner and the Atlas launch vehicle has a long 

history of successfully launching lunar missions, including Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor, 

LRO/LCROSS and GRAIL. Astrobotic is proud to launch on a proven American launch vehicle from 

Cape Canaveral, Florida. 

3 http://news.mit.edu/20 15/mars-mission-save-weight-fuel-on-Moon-1 015 

4 
41 

Airbus .DS is providing systems engineering support and insight, along with irreplaceable wisdom from 

past ESA lunar lander Airbus DS has also provided cmcial independent reviews for our 

spacecraft development milestortes. 

DHL, the world's largest logistics company, is significant resources to bear for our mission, and 

is joining our effort as "The Official Logistics to the Moon." Astrobotic's partnership with DHL 

is another example of the new opportunities that made possible with low cost lunar transportation. No 

longer is the Moon solely the domain of national governments. 

Demonstrating Credibility and Program Maturity 

Astrobotic's in the lunar market is made possible by the company's steadfast focus on 

developing a credible In fact, the Peregrine Lander recently completed a 

Preliminary Design Review, with support from Astrobotic's world-class partners, NASA Lunar 

CATALYST and Airbus DS. Astrobotic has also spaceflight talent from across the 

In the case of our Mission Director, Astrobotic a fanner 25-year Lockheed Martin veteran, 

has put dozens of payloads into space on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Our lead 

systems engineer is a veteran of 13 space missions GRAIL, Mars Odyssey, Mars 

Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, and Orion. In all, has added more than 

experience to our team in the last 8-monlhs. Astrobotic has been able to add these space veterans 

becanse of the reputation we have built over the past decade, delivering results across 23 past and ongoing 

NASA contracts, and developing aetna! hardware and technology for our mission. 

Across the years we have built and flight qualified a structure for a Peregrine precursor 

lander, conducted nnmerons lunar surface mobility at lnnar sites, and even 

demonstrated the world's first visually guided guided 

propulsive landing tests, we flew our Terrain Navigation (TRN) technology three on a 

Masten Lander in the Mojave Desert, and successfully demonstrated an autonomous guidance system in a 

GPS-denied environment that avoided mock ground hazards. TRN is exactly the kind of technology that 

will be needed to land at challenging environments like the lunar poles. 

Delivering NASA Payloads to the Moon 

With NASA's deep into our from the mnlti-year Lnnar CATALYST experience, 

Astrobotic believes now the right for NASA to join our payload manifest with a payload 

reservation. Such a reservation would validate NASA's fnture nse payload delivery services, 

market, is made up of international 

space agencies, research institutions, and 

We appreciate the leadership of House Commcrce-Jnstice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee 

Chairman John Culberson (R-TX) and Ranking Member Jose Serrano (D-NY), as well as the members of 

5 
42 

ASTROBOTIC 

fi 

the committee for their leadership in providing $30 million in the FY 2018 Appropriations bill for a small 

robotic Lunar Lander demonstration mission. We are hopeful that the Senate will follow the House's lead 

and this funding will be included in a final Omnibus. Such funding would allow NASA to join our first 

mission with its own payload reservation, which would serve as a demonstration of service for the 

agency. 

A NASA payload reservation would be a major step toward bringing small lander capabilities like 

Peregrine online, and would set up the lunar payload market to flourish. While Astrobotic has secured 11 

deals to deliver payload on our first mission, it is no secret that the rest of the international space agency 

community looks closely to NASA's example for leadership. Such a demonstration of NASA payload 

delivery would enable the consideration of small landers for space exploration architectures and further 

help close new business cases in cislunar space. 

A NASA demonstration mission would also aid in establishing a regular cadence of small to medium 

sized payload deliveries, and promote a vital logistics pipeline to the Moon that can be sustainably grown 

on a diverse market. The self-sustaining small to medium class service can help build the foundation for 

affordable large-scale lunar endeavors such as human surface missions, which would likely have an 

exclusive reliance on U.S. Government demand. Small robotic missions are a logical first step toward 

one day re-establishing a human presence on the lunar surface, and commercial services like Astrobotic 

exist today with a demonstrated market demand outside of the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government 

would be wise to ensure that the demand for the small to medium sized pay load market is not quashed in 

a rush to develop larger capabilities that have no outside commercial demand for the foreseeable future. 

It should also be noted that Astrobotic and American small lander services are competing with a halfdozen other private lunar payload delivery providers from the international community. A significant 

payload reservation on board a U.S. commercial provider from NASA would cement our status as the 

world leader in lnnar delivery, and lead to the capture of a substantial portion of the international market 

by U.S. industry. Our sales pipeline currently bas more than 100-deals that could also be won by our 

international competitors. In the event that one ofthese competitors captures a major portion of these 

eligible deals, American payload delivery providers could fall behind, and NASA could be left without a 

U.S.-domestic lunar payload delivery provider. Assuming that NASA is restricted to using domestic 

payload delivery providers (as is typically the case for launch vehicles), the agency could be shut out of 

getting its payloads to the lunar surface, while the rest of the international community is ramping np lunar 

surface activities. A NASA payload reservation on a small lander service like Peregrine would have a 

resounding effect toward ensuring American market share in this new lunar market. 

Long Term Applications for Small Lander Services 

With an imminent demonstration of lunar payload services, small lunar landers like Peregrine can now be 

leveraged for the purposes of NASA's ncar term exploration goals. Small robotic landers like 

Astrobotic's Peregrine stand ready to support upcoming NASA erewed Exploration Missions on SLSOrion to the Deep Space Gateway by enabling telerobotic access to landers and rovers on the surface. In 

fact, SLS's unprecedented lift capability could carry multiple Peregrine landers along with crew, allowing 

access to multiple parts of the Moon during the same mission, while the crew operates from Orion and 

Deep Space Gateway in orbit. Small robotic lunar landers would be highly complimentary to the Deep 

Space Gateway. Their use in concert with the Gateway would be the first step toward an ecosystem of 

public-private activity around and on the Moon. 

In addition to providing direct support to SLS-Orion crewed Exploration Missions at the Deep Space 

Gateway, there are dozens of small to medium sized NASA payloads that arc ready to fly to the Moon on 

small robotic landers. These payloads run the gamut of science, exploration, and technology 

6 
43 

ASTiiOBOTIC 

fi 

demonstration, and many of them were identified in responses to a recent Request for Information issued 

by the Advanced Exploration Systems division at NASA in October 2016. As mentioned, it has been 

more than 40 years since NASA has soft landed payloads on the surface of the Moon. Small lander 

services have the potential to not just end this drought; they can afford NASA the ability to rapidly follow 

up an initial experiment with another one. 

The value of this capability to science and exploration cannot be overstated. In the past, large 

sophisticated missions might visit the Moon, make a breakthrough, and then leave the science and 

exploration communities no ability to practically follow up their groundbreaking findings. Small to 

medium sized NASA payloads on landers like Peregrine fundamentally speed up the pace of discovery by 

allowing the agency to return to the Moon rapidly and regularly. The low cost of building and delivering 

payloads on small landers allows payload builders to experiment and try new approaches they never 

would have felt comfortable with on a mission that comes around once a decade and costs hundreds of 

millions of dollars. This rapid cadence of flights opens new horizons in our nation's space capabilities. 

From a national policy perspective, small lander private missions to the Moon also provide an opportunity 

for the United States to help establish international norms for private activities at planetary destinations. 

For instance, retroreflectors might be carried on board Peregrine for a space agency as a payload to obtain 

new findings in the Earth-Moon system. At the same time, the permanent placement of these 

retroreflectors on the lunar surface could serve as physical navigation beacons for aiding and informing 

future missions to the Moon. Those beacons could also be used to assist in deconflicting interference and 

establishing keep out zones for future lunar activity in heavily congested areas on the surface. Perhaps 

most importantly, private small lander missions can establish norms and infrastructure like this 

retroreflectors example in just a couple of years. 

With a commercial market already at hand for lunar payload services, small lander services can quickly 

ensure America is well represented in a new era of lunar activity, and international norms can be modeled 

by early American industry actors. In the most immediate term, Astrobotic has been glad to work with 

the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) to ensure our activities are in compliance 

with the Outer Space Treaty, and that we arc well positioned to receive a mission authorization from the 

U.S. Government when the time is appropriate. Thanks to the FAA AST, we are confident there are no 

substantial regulatory barriers to our mission, and our customer base has demonstrated that they feel 

similarly. Based on our experience with FAA AST to date, we have been impressed with the 

professionalism, efficiency and responsiveness of their staff in facilitating this process, and commend 

their efforts to work with industry to enable non-traditional space activities. 

NASA Authorization Recommendations 

As this committee plans for the next NASA Authorization and conducts ongoing oversight, we urge you 

to consider authorizing a "Frontier Class Lander Services" program for small robotic landers and rovers 

to the lunar surface -- similar to the Venture Class Launch Services program for small launch vehicles --

within the NASA Launch Services Program. This would provide a contractual mechanism for NASA and 

international partners to easily purchase payload space for experiments and technology demonstrators. 

Foil owing the Venture Class Launch model would allow all mission directorates at NASA to take 

advantage of this new American capability. For example, the Hun1an Exploration and Operations 

Mission Directorate could acquire payload service to the lunar surface for ongoing missions at the Deep 

Space Gateway. The Science Mission Directorate conld opt to deliver science instruments on the Moon, 

and vastly increase the cadence of flight opportunities in cislunar space. The Space Technology Mission 

Directorate could increase the Technology Readiness Level of new space technology with actual 

7 
44 

ASTROBOTIC 

experience on the lunar surface. Ultimately a Frontier Class Lander Services program would enhance 

NASA's portfolio of capability across the agency. 

We also encourage NASA to think creatively about how it can help bring international space agency 

partners to the table to think about opportunities to do science, technology and exploration experiments 

and missions using this new small lander capability. Many entities in the international space community 

have expressed a desire to operate missions on the Moon. Perhaps most notably, the head of the 

European Space Agency, Dr. Jan Woerner, has outlined a vision for a global Lunar Village, in which the 

next human outpost beyond the International Space Station (ISS) is on the Moon. As a leader of past 

international cooperative programs like the ISS, NASA would be well suited to aid in the facilitation of 

placing international space agency payloads on American small lander services. 

Conclusion 

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity today to share our latest developments toward reestablishing American access to the lunar surface. Our team is proud to be leading a Moonshot from 

America's Rust Belt. We plan to source most of our supply chain from the region, and apply the 

manufacturing might of our area to reach the Moon. As a company based in Pittsburgh, we know that we 

stand on the shoulders of giants who helped make our region capable and strong. We also know that 

these new possibilities on the Moon are made possible thanks to the incredible pioneering spirit of those 

who carne before us. 

We now seek to advance these legacies toward a new era in American leadership on the Moon, and we 

believe this is a special moment in time for our company, our industry, and our country. Both the public 

and private sectors around the world have outlined plans for lunar activity in the near term. Small lander 

services to the Moon like Astrobotic now have a verified market demonstrated with real sales, world class 

partners, and a technically mature spacecraft design. With policy and appropriations support from 

Congress, American small lander services can capture a significant share of a nascent 21" century space 

market, while getting NASA back to the Moon. Astrobotic is ready to rise to this occasion, and chart a 

new course on the lunar surface for American explorers and entrepreneurs. 

I would be happy to respond to any questions you or the other Members of the Subcommittee may have. 

8 
45 

JOHN THORNTON 

ASTIHIBOiiC 

affordable space 

techntliO>!Y contracts, 

was to reboot the 

comcwate structure, attracted key 

model. Thornton 

contract and led the to an 

mission. Thornton joined at 

as Mechanical Engineering Lead and soon !hereafter was 

He led development of the "rt"''~m·~ soar:ecraft 

the Artemis lander and the 
46 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Thornton. 

I now recognize Mr. Alexander for five minutes to present his 

testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. BRETTON ALEXANDER, 

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGY, 

BLUE ORIGIN 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Bera, and 

Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 

speak before you today about private sector lunar exploration, a 

topic that we’re very excited about at Blue Origin. 

Before I begin, I’d like to extend our thoughts and support to our 

friends at Johnson Space Center and the broader Texas community 

as they recover from Hurricane Harvey and to those at Kennedy 

and throughout Florida in the path of Hurricane Irma. 

Blue Origin was founded to bring about a future where millions 

of people are living and working in space. We are committed to 

building the next generation of space transportation and are prepared to bring significant private capital to partner with NASA for 

return to the lunar surface. 

It’s time for America to return to the Moon, this time to stay. Enabling NASA and U.S. commercial activities on the Moon is a key 

step on the path to long-term exploration of the solar system. 

Imagine driving from DC. to Los Angeles nonstop. You’d have to 

carry with you all of your fuel, food, and other necessities with you, 

which would make for a difficult trip. The Moon provides the resources and proximity to enable human exploration of deep space 

destinations like Mars, making it the ideal proving ground and 

first step. 

For example, the lunar South Pole’s Shackleton Crater contains 

critical resources for fuel and power generation while also offering 

a nearby proving ground for deep space exploration technologies. 

All of this potential has not gone unnoticed. Many commercial 

entities and nations have plans for an ambitious decade of lunar 

exploration. The United States should be the leader in this worthy 

endeavor. 

Blue Moon is a space transportation and lunar lander system 

that can cost-effectively deliver more than 10,000 pounds of cargo 

from Earth to the lunar surface. This equates to about five Mars 

Curiosity Rovers, or two Ford F–150 trucks. When you can cost-effectively and precisely soft land large amounts of cargo on the 

Moon, there are few limits on what you can do, everything from 

science rovers to resource discovery and utilization mission to surface habitats is made possible. 

Blue Moon is scalable, repeatable, and based on proven technologies. Optimized to fly on NASA’s Space Launch System, Blue 

Moon also scales to fly on many different launch vehicles. Just pick 

the launch vehicle and go. Smaller payloads, such as NASA’s Resource Prospector, can use an Atlas V rocket, while larger payloads 

can use Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle or NASA’s SLS. 

Blue Origin’s proven technology provides a fast path to a U.S. 

lunar landing capability for medium to large payloads. Blue Origin’s BE–3 is the first new liquid hydrogen-fueled rocket engine to 

be developed for production in over a decade. It has been proven 
47 

during five launches and landings of our New Shepard vertical 

landing booster. The BE–3’s efficiency, deep throttling and relight 

capabilities all translate into more useful payload mass landed on 

the Moon. 

Precision landing is also key, and Blue Origin has demonstrated 

this capability with the same New Shepard vehicle five times in 

less than a year. Both technologies reduce development time and 

risk. 

Blue Origin has made and continues to make significant investments in the foundational technologies needed for Blue Moon. As 

part of a public-private partnership with NASA, we are willing to 

invest further in developing this capability. We invite NASA to 

partner with Blue Origin using innovative contracting mechanisms 

that require private sector investment and cost-sharing. NASA’s 

Commercial Cargo and NextSTEP programs represent successful 

models that require partners to bring money and technologies toward achieving shared goals. These partnerships allow the country 

to meet big objectives more rapidly, while also promoting economic 

development and U.S. strategic leadership in space. 

A NASA Reauthorization Act should include provisions that 

prioritize landing on the lunar surface in the near term. It should 

establish a regular cadence of cargo missions and include a strategy for the Moon as a stepping-stone for expanding human exploration in our solar system. 

We are on the verge of a new space age, one defined by multiple 

international competitors focused on getting to the lunar surface. 

This Congress has the opportunity to ensure America’s continued 

leadership in space. The Moon should be the near-term focus of 

human spaceflight beyond LEO as a necessary step toward exploration of the solar system, and Blue Origin is willing to significantly invest in partnership with NASA to accelerate America’s return to the Moon. 

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Alexander follows:] 
48 

Testimony of Bretton Alexander 

Director, Business Development & Strategy 

Blue Origin 

Before the House Subcommittee on Space 

Hearing on Private Sector Lunar Exploration 

September 7, 2017 

Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Bera, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the 

opportunity to speak before you today about private sector lunar exploration -a topic that we're 

very excited about at Blue Origin. 

Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin to bring about a future where millions of people are living and 

working in space. Our team of over eleven hundred people across the nation works tirelessly 

each and every day to enable this future. We believe that the backbone of this vision is to 

achieve full operational reusability with our launch vehicles, which will lower the cost of access 

to space at higher flight rates and higher levels of safety and reliability. We will get there through 

practice, and we've recently made great progress flying our fully reusable New Shepard vehicle 

to space and back five times in less than 12 months. We are now developing New Glenn, our 

next-generation reusable rocket that will launch people and payloads to low Earth orbit and 

beyond. 

We are committed to building the next generation of space transportation infrastructure, 

providing reliable, affordable, and frequent rides to space for everything from people and 

satellites to deep space exploration. 

We recently entered into agreements with our first two commercial satellite launch customers for 

our New Glenn vehicle. We are ready to help end the nation's reliance on Russian engines for 

national security launches with our BE-4 engine. We are prepared to bring private capital to 

partner with NASA for a return to the lunar surface. 

Why the Moon 

It's time for America to return to the Moon- this time to stay. Enabling NASA and U.S. 

commercial activities on the Moon is a key step on the path to long-term exploration of the solar 

system. Imagine driving from D.C. to Los Angeles with no rest stop. You'd have to carry all of 

your fuel, food, and other necessities with you, which would make for a logistically-challenging 

trip. The same idea can be applied to space travel. Reaching destinations beyond low Earth 

orbit takes days, months, or even years, limiting human exploration due to the resource and 

logistics challenges necessary to sustain life. Fortunately, the Moon provides the resources and 

proximity to enable human exploration of deep space destinations like Mars, making it the ideal 

proving ground and rest stop for future exploration. 

For example, the lunar South Pole's Shackleton Crater contains ice for fuel and logistics 

support, mineral compounds for developing structures, and near-continuous sunlight for power 

generation. Shackleton Crater, and other locations like it, offer a realistic proving ground for 

testing of critical deep space exploration technologies in close proximity to Earth. 

All of this potential has not gone unnoticed. Multiple international commercial entities and 

nations have plans for an ambitious decade of lunar exploration. The United States should be 

the leader in this worthy endeavor. 

September 7, 2017 
49 

Blue Moon 

When you can cost effectively and precisely soft land large amounts of cargo on the Moon, 

there are few limits on what you can do. Cutting-edge science rovers. resource discovery and 

utilization missions, logistics support, and surface habitats are all made possible. The Blue 

Moon lunar lander can cost-effectively deliver over 10,000 pounds of useful payload to the lunar 

surface. Blue Moon is scalable, repeatable and based on proven technologies. 

Scalable Payload Delivery 

Blue Moon is optimized to fly on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), providing the maximum 

payload to the lunar surface, but can also fly on many different launch vehicles, including Blue 

Origin's own New Glenn. The amount of cargo that can be delivered to the lunar surface 

depends on the launch vehicle, providing a flexible, scalable approach depending on the 

specific payload. For example, launch of a smaller payload, such as NASA's Resource 

Prospector, can use an Atlas V rocket, while much larger payloads can be launched on SLS. 

Using SLS, Blue Moon can deliver over ten thousand pounds of cargo to the lunar surface, 

which equates to the weight of about five Mars Curiosity rovers or two Ford F-150 trucks. 

Delivering payloads of this size class facilitates many of the lunar exploration, science, and 

technology demonstration goals outlined in NASA's Planetary Science program, NASA Strategic 

Knowledge Gaps, and the NASA Strategic Space Technology Investment Plan. Blue Moon's 

payload capacity can enable high-value missions from resource discovery and power 

generation to lunar sample return. 

Repeatable Missions 

Blue Moon is designed to be a repeatable transportation service, providing NASA with a 

commercial lunar cargo delivery solution. Just pick the launch vehicle and go. There is minimal 

customization of each lander. This repeatability ensures low cost and reliable access to the 

lunar surface for NASA as well as non-governmental activities. 

With this cadence and substantial payload capacity, Blue Moon can conduct increasingly 

capable missions over time, such as ongoing pre-positioning of the comprehensive 

infrastructure needed for a human return. These repeatable missions will be the building blocks 

of a lunar economy and a key step on the path to millions of people living and working in space. 

Proven Technologies 

Blue Origin's proven technology, developed with private investment and enhanced by NASA's 

expertise, provides a fast path to a domestic U.S. lunar landing capability for medium to large 

payload delivery. 

Precision landing is critical when transporting valuable payloads to the lunar surface, and Blue 

Origin has demonstrated this capability. We are developing the New Shepard suborbital system 

to take astronauts into space for tourism and science purposes. New Shepard has successfully 

flown five times in less than a year with the same rocket landing from space at our West Texas 

launch site. This accomplishment demonstrates the capability of the Blue Origin team to rapidly 

conduct breakthrough missions and powered precision vertical landings from space. 

2 

September 7, 2017 
50 

The Blue Moon architecture directly incorporates facets of New Shepard, including Vertical 

TakeoffNertical Landing (VTVL) technology and in-house tank development and tooling 

expertise. This technology, coupled with our extensive liquid propulsion capabilities, reduces 

development time and risk. 

Blue Origin's 11 0,000-lbf BE-3 is the first new U.S. liquid hydrogen-fueled rocket engine to be 

developed for production in over a decade. The BE-3 engine has been proven for both launch 

and landing on the New Shepard program. The BE-3U, a 120,000-lbf in-space version of the 

engine, is an existing engine development program for Blue Origin's New Glenn that will be 

adapted for Blue Moon. The BE-3U's high specific impulse, deep throttling, and relight 

capabilities all translate into more useful payload mass landed on the Moon. 

Public-Private Partnership 

Blue Origin has made and continues to make significant investments in the foundational 

technologies needed for Blue Moon. As part of a public-private partnership with NASA, we are 

willing to invest further in developing this capability. 

Specifically, NASA could partner with Blue Origin for medium to large lander development and 

services using innovative contracting mechanisms that require private sector investment and 

cost-share. Commercial Cargo and Next Space Technologies for Exploration (NextSTEP) 

represent successful programs that require partners to bring capital and existing technologies 

towards achieving shared goals with NASA. These mutually beneficial partnerships allow the 

country to meet ambitious lunar objectives more rapidly, while simultaneously facilitating 

economic development and U.S. strategic leadership in space. 

Legislative Considerations 

The U.S. regulatory environment needs to accommodate the new era of commercial activities in 

space and the technology developments that are on the horizon. As addressed in House Bill 

H.R. 2809, the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act of 2017, there remains a need 

for regulatory certainty and Congressional clarification on treaty interpretation before U.S. 

companies begin in-earnest activities on the Moon and other celestial bodies. This committee 

has an opportunity to steer commercial space activities through legislation authorizing NASA 

and the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). 

As it relates to the Moon, a NASA Authorization Act should include provisions that prioritize 

landing on the lunar surface within a certain number of years, establish the requirements for a 

regular cadence of cargo missions, and a strategy that includes how the Moon can serve as a 

stepping-stone for expanding human exploration in our solar system. NASA partnerships with 

commercial companies will save taxpayer dollars, while enabling industry to expand the market 

for space transportation and research opportunities, supporting various missions to the lunar 

surface in the mid-to-late 2020s. 

An updated Commercial Space Launch Act can address ongoing concerns with the FAA 

payload review process, as well as planetary protection, and non-interference provisions of the 

Outer Space Treaty. This committee can ensure that commercial space companies are able to 

pursue missions on the Moon and other on-orbit activities by directing that regulatory and 

executive agencies- including FAA, NOAA, FCC, NASA, and the State Department- may not 

attempt to, or in any way, deny access to space on the basis of Articles VI and IX of the Outer 

Space Treaty. The outlook is bright for commercial activities in space; however, U.S. regulatory 

3 

September 7, 2017 
51 

agencies could stifle industry at each step of advancement without clear guidance from the 

Congress. 

There are strategic advantages to near-term U.S. lunar surface activities, as well as national 

security implications for establishing infrastructure in desirable locations. Despite the Moon's 

size, there are relatively few sites from which to begin looking for resources, which could lead to 

non-interference issues among countries. Many nation states and international commercial 

entities have plans to go to the Moon, including China, Russia, the European Space Agency, 

and more. The U.S. should not overlook the benefits of arriving on the Moon first, this is the very 

definition of American leadership in space. 

Streamlining Launch Licensing 

It is also important to streamline licensing of commercial launches as industry transitions from 

expendable to reusable rockets. In the case of expendable rockets, FAA and Air Force 

requirements are nearly identical. When launching from a federal range, a company can create 

a single set of deliverables for the Air Force and provide the same information to the FAA to 

satisfy launch license requirements. It is duplicative, but not onerous. In contrast, Air Force and 

FAA licensing requirements for reusable rockets are completely different from each other, 

necessitating two entirely different but equally rigorous sets of deliverables. This is duplicative 

and onerous, and will increase costs, delays, and uncertainty. 

Instead, we seek streamlined licensing, irrespective of vehicle type, in alignment with the 

structure of 14 C.F.R. Part 431, "Launch and Reentry of a Reusable Launch Vehicle". 

We want FAA as the single point of contact for any commercial spaceflight company 

interactions with the government with sole authority over launches and reentries, without regard 

to location or type of launch, consistent with the National Space Transportation Policy. We 

encourage Congress to ensure that AST is prioritizing its existing, and any new resources, on its 

current statutory mission. 

Conclusion 

The leadership of the United States during the original space race and those first footsteps on 

the lunar surface are forever a part of our country's collective conscious. That unifying moment 

is part of what makes us who we are and inspires our shared desire for exploration even today. 

We are on the verge of a new space age, one defined by multiple international competitors that 

have renewed interest in the Moon. 

This Congress has the opportunity to ensure America's continued leadership in space, which, in 

the near term, means leading the development of a lunar economy. Blue Origin's proven 

technology developed through private investment and enhanced by NASA's expertiseenables long-term exploration and U.S. leadership in space. Blue Moon complements NASA's 

SLS launch system and is a natural addition to the country's overall exploration architecture. 

Long-term exploration plans of any kind will require precise delivery of large amounts of cargo 

and Blue Moon can provide that. Any credible first lunar settlement will require that capability. 

Together, we can advance America's strategic interests in space. We are extending an offer of 

partnership that includes significant private investment and proven technology. 

4 

September 7, 2017 
52 

Bretton (Brett) Alexander Director of Business 

Development and Strategy for Blue Origin, LLC, a 

developer of vehicles and technologies to enable 

human space transportation. From October 2009 to 

October 2011, Brett was a member of the NASA 

Advisory Council (NAC), serving as the chair of the 

Commercial Space Committee, assessing NASA's 

partnership with industry to develop commercial crew 

and cargo capabilities to support the International 

Space Station and private spaceflight Brett has 

served as a member of the FAA's Commercial Space 

Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) since 

2008. 

Brett previously served as a senior policy analyst for 

space issues the White House Office of Science and 

Technology Policy where he served both Presidents 

Bush and Clinton. While at the White House, he played 

a central role in development of the Vision for Space 

Exploration, announced in January 2004. 

From December 2006 to May 2011, Brett served as 

President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, 

o"''lf"""'Ps and organizations working to make commercial human 

spaceflight a reality. From 2008 to 2011, Brett was also a consultant in the space industry, 

providing strategy and business development advice to launch service providers and vehicle 

developers, as well as assessment of international space activities to NASA. 

From 2007 to 2008, Brett served as the executive director for Space and the X PRIZE Cup at the 

X PRIZE Foundation, responsible for overseeing all aspects ofthe Google Lunar X Prize, the 

Lunar Lander Challenge, and the X PRIZE Cup. He was also senior advisor to Transformational 

Space Corporation (t!Space) from 2005 to 2007. Prior to the White House, Brett held positions in 

the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, The Aerospace 

Corporation, and ANSER Corporation. 

Brett holds Master and Bachelor of Science degrees in aerospace engineering from the 

University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. 
53 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Alexander. I appreciate that. 

I now recognize Dr. Sowers for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. GEORGE SOWERS, PROFESSOR, 

SPACE RESOURCES, COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES 

Dr. SOWERS. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, 

thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss private 

sector lunar exploration. 

The subject of today’s hearing is of great interest to me. It’s part 

of a larger topic, one that is truly revolutionary, that of bringing 

the resources of space into the economic sphere of humankind. 

There have been two major economic revolutions in human history: the Agricultural Revolution of 10,000 years ago, which gave 

birth to human civilization, and the Industrial Revolution of 300 

years ago, which gave rise to the tremendous increase in human 

well-being and prosperity we enjoy today. 

Space resources will be the third major economic revolution and 

will usher in an era of unprecedented prosperity and flourishing. 

Furthermore, the development of space resources will enable us to 

save the Earth as we unchain human progress from the constraints 

of Earth’s ever-diminishing resources. 

Compared to Earth, the resources available in space are virtually 

infinite. Consider the power output of the Sun is 10 trillion times 

the power consumption of humans. Just one metallic asteroid 500 

meters in diameter contains more platinum-group metals than 

have ever been mined. 

Finally, we now know that the solar system contains abundant 

quantities of water. If you have water, you have hydrogen and oxygen, which are the most efficient chemical propellants known. 

Water is the oil of space. 

We know these resources exist. Bringing them within the economic sphere of humankind requires the machinery of a robust 

space economy, and that means harnessing the power of the free 

market. Competition in the free market spurs innovation, leading 

to efficiency and growth. But the foundation of the free market is 

the consumer, the ordinary citizen, the taxpayer. The space economy must deliver value to consumers on Earth. Hence, the first 

place to begin is cislunar space. 

The goal then of private sector exploration of the Moon is economic development. Extraction and utilization of lunar resources 

will be cornerstone of that development. The Moon is rich in resources that will drive the cislunar economy but the resource that 

would be most valuable in the near term is water processed into 

propellant. It happens that water is abundant at the lunar poles, 

billions of metric tons per pole by some estimates. A year ago, 

while at United Launch Alliance, I became the first person to offer 

to buy propellant in space. I set up price for propellant bought either at the lunar surface at $500 a kilogram or in high-Earth orbit 

like the first Earth-Moon Lagrange Point at $1,000 per kilogram. 

At these prices, the cost of any activity beyond low-Earth orbit becomes dramatically reduced. For example, the cost to deliver mass 

to the surface of the Moon will be reduced by a factor of three. The 

cost of a Mars mission will be similarly reduced. So you can see 
54 

that the water on the Moon is an immensely valuable resources. 

Strategically, we should view the poles of the Moon as the next 

Persian Gulf. 

I’ve described the cislunar economy as a free market but the operation of a free market requires government to establish a framework of rights, enforce contracts, and to provide security. These 

things are part of the machinery of a robust space economy and are 

essential to reduce business uncertainty and enable private sector 

investment. 

Beyond the minimal, there’s much the government can do to 

stimulate the creation of the cislunar economy. First is to invest in 

the basic science to characterize the resources and develop the 

technologies to exploit them. One approach would be for NASA to 

establish a space resources institute, partnering with both academia and industry, domestic and international, to solve some of 

the basic problems common to all. 

Second is to participate in the cislunar marketplace. I set a price 

for propellant based on purely commercial considerations, but having NASA as an additional customer purchasing propellant for, say, 

a Mars mission would significantly improve the business case and 

attract more competitors, driving more innovation and lowering 

costs even further. That’s the virtuous circle of the free market. 

Finally, NASA could invest through public-private partnerships 

in, for example, lunar water mining operations. This approach has 

proven successful with Commercial Crew and Cargo, and works 

well when the risks are too great for the private sector to take on 

by itself. 

In conclusion, humankind is on the cusp of a third major economic revolution that promises to bring unprecedented prosperity 

and well-being for all. The first step is the creation of the cislunar 

economy with important roles for both the private sector and government. 

Thank you again for inviting me to testify, and I look forward to 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Sowers follows:] 
55 

Testimony of 

Dr. George F. Sowers Jr. 

Professor, Space Resources 

Colorado School of Mines 

Subcommittee on Space 

Committee on Science, Space and Technology 

United States House of Representatives 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity 

to appear today to discuss private sector lunar exploration. My name is George Sowers 

and I am a Professor of Practice at the Colorado School ofMincs in Space Resources. 

Earlier this year, I retired from United Launch Alliance where I was Chief Scientist and 

Vice President of Advanced Programs. 

Summary 

• Space resources will be the third major economic revolution in human history. 

o Frees human progress from the resource constraints of Earth. 

• Space resources are nearly infinite. 

• Developing space resources will require a robust space economy. 

o Based on Free Market principles. 

o Must deliver value to consumers on Earth. 

• Cislunar space, due to proximity with Earth, is the starting point. 

• Economic development of the Moon will be critical to creating a robust cislunar 

economy. 

• Propellant derived from water mined on the moon will be one of the first 

economically viable activities. 

• Propellant from the Moon can dramatically reduce the cost of most space 

activities including missions to Mars. 

• Government has several roles to play in developing the cislunar economy 

o Establishing a framework of rights, enforcing contracts and providing 

security. 

o Investing in basic science and technologies. 

o Participating in the cislunar economy as a customer. 

o Investing in infrastructure through public-private partnerships. 
56 

Introduction 

The subject oftoday's hearing is of great interest to me. It is part of a larger 

topic-one that is truly revolutionary-that of bringing the resources of space into the 

economic sphere of humankind. There have been two major economic revolutions in 

human history: the agricultural revolution of l 0,000 years ago which gave birth to human 

civilization and the industrial revolution of 300 years ago which gave rise to the 

tremendous increase in human well-being and prosperity we enjoy today. Space resources 

will be the third major economic revolution and will usher in an era of unprecedented 

prosperity and flourishing. Furthermore, the development of space resources will enable 

us to save the Earth as we unchain human progress from the constraints of Earth's ever 

diminishing resources. Table l shows the major economic revolution in human history. 

Table 1 Economic revolutions through human histmy 

Revolution Timeframe Location Energy Capture Impact 

Evolution of ~100,000 East Africa 4,000-5,000 Spread 

Modem Humans years ago kcal/cap/day throughout 

world 

Agricultural ~10,000 Levant 10,000-30,000 Increased 

years ago (hilly kcal/cap/day population, 

flanks) empires, 

crowding, 

disease 

Industrial ~300 years England 50,000-230,000 Manufacturing, 

ago kcal/cap/day mining, 

transportation, 

prosperity, 

pollution, 

climate change 

Space Resources 10-50 years Cislunar Hydrogen/oxygen Universal 

from now space propellants, solar prosperity, 

power green emih, 

»250,000 reduce/ eliminate 

kcal/cap/day scarcity 

Compared to Earth, the resources available in space are virtually infinite. 

Consider. The power output of the sun is ten trillion times the entire world's power 

consumption. Just one metallic asteroid, 500 meters in diameter, contains more platinum 

group metals than have ever been mined. Finally, we now know, in large part through the 

efforts ofNASA, that the inner solar system contains abundant quantities of water. If 

you have water, you have hydrogen and oxygen, which are the most efficient chemical 

propellants known. Water is the oil of space. 

2 
57 

We know these resources exist. them within the economic sphere of 

humankind requires the machinery of a robust And that means 

harnessing the power of the fi·ee market. market spurs innovation 

leading to efficiency and growth. But the foundation of the free market is the consumer, 

the ordinary citizen-the taxpayer. The space economy must deliver value to consumers 

on Earth. Hence, the first place to begin is cislunar space: the Earth, the Moon and 

neighboring space to include near Earth objects (NEOs) or asteroids. 

The geography of cislunar space detennines the types of economic activities that 

might take place in various locations. The key locations arc low Earth orbit (LEO), 

Geosynchronous orbit (GEO), Earth-Moon Lagrange point number one (EMU), low 

lunar orbit (LLO), the lunar surface or a near Earth object (NEO) or asteroid. Of critical 

importance is the energy required to move from one location to another. A useful proxy 

tor this energy is Delta V, the increment of velocity that must be added to a spacecraft to 

travel from one location to another. Figure l shows the relative locations in cislunar 

space, the delta V between the locations as well as some of the economic activities that 

might take place at key locations. 
58 

The goal, then, sector exploration of the Moon is economic 

development. The extraction and utilization of lunar resources will be the cornerstone of 

that development. 

The Moon is rich in resources that will drive the Cislunar Economy. The basic 

regolith can be used as raw material feeding operations. Helium tlu·ee, 

implanted by the solar wind, could be mined as fuel for fusion power plants. But the 

resource that will be most valuable in the near tenn is water into propellant. It 

happens that water is abundant at the lunar poles, billions of mettic tons per pole by some 

estimates. 

One year ago June, while at United Launch Alliance, l became the first person to 

offer to buy propellant in space. l set a for propellant bought either on the lunar 

surface ($500/kg) or in a Earth orbit like the first Earth-Moon point 

($1000/kg). It turns out that can buy in orbit for less than costs to ship 

it there from Earth, the business case can close. At these prices, the cost of any activity 

beyond low Earth orbit becomes dramatically reduced. For example, the cost to deliver 

mass to the surface of the Moon will be reduced by a factor of three. The cost of a Mars 

mission will be similarly reduced. So, you can see that the water on the Moon is an 

immensely valuable resource. we should view the of the Moon as the 

next Persian Gulf. 2 shows the cost at places within cislunar 

space. 

Graphics courtesy UlA 
59 

The Role of Government 

I've described the Cislunar Economy as a free market and in general, a free 

market means commercial entities doing business with other commercial entities. But the 

operation of a free market requires government to establish a framework of rights, 

enforce contracts and provide security. These things are part of the machinery of a robust 

space economy and are essential to reduce business uncertainty and enable private sector 

investment. 

Beyond the minimal, there is much the government can do to stimulate the 

creation of the Cislunar Economy. First is to invest in basic science to characterize the 

resources and develop the technologies to exploit them. One approach would be for 

NASA to establish a Space Resources Institute, partnering with both academia and 

industry, domestic and international, to solve some of the basic problems common to all. 

Second is to participate in the cislunar marketplace. I set a price for propellant 

based on purely commercial considerations. But having NASA as an additional customer 

purchasing propellant for, say, a Mars mission would significantly improve the business 

case and attract more competitors driving more innovation and lowering costs even 

further. That is the virtuous circle of the free market. 

Finally, NASA could invest through a public-private partnership in, for example, 

a water mining operation. This approach has proven successful with commercial crew 

and cargo and works well when the risks are too great for the private sector to take on by 

itself. Of course, a significant return on investment should accrue to both parties. 

NASA has chartered a scientific analysis group to assess lunar exploration 

priorities. Called the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), this group has retained 

a Commercial Advisory Board (CAB) of which I am a member. The LEAG CAB 

conducted a workshop in June and developed several findings which are consistent with 

my testimony. The one-page summary of the workshop is included as Attachment 1. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, humankind is on the cusp of a third major economic revolution that 

promises to bring unprecedented prosperity and well-being for all. The first step is the 

creation of the cislunar economy. The private sector is poised to begin. Government 

pm1icipation will only accelerate its realization. I close with a quote from John 

Marburger, the science advisor to President George W. Bush, from a 2006 address. 

The Moon has unique significance for all space applications for a reason 

that to my amazement is hardly ever discussed in popular accounts of 

space policy. The Moon is the closest source of material that lies far up 

Earth's gravity well. Anything that can be made from Lunar material at 

costs comparable to Earth manufacture has an enormous overall cost 

advantage compared with objects lifted from Earth's surface. The greatest 

value of the Moon lies neither in science nor in exploration, but in its 

material. 

Thank you again for inviting me to testify. I look forward to your questions. 
60 

Attachments: 

1. Back to the Moon Workshop Report 
61 

Back to the Moon Workshop Report 

21-22 June 2017, Lunar & Planetary Institute, Houston. 

Executive Summary 

There are many private sector companies that have aspirations to do things on 

and around the Moon. We heard from several of them at the meeting. No one 

has flight proven capability ...... yet, but the first commercial expedition has 

regulatory approval for late this year. 

Many of these capabilities will enable real economic development of cislunar 

space and real wealth creation. 

We heard universal agreement that the following were the greatest challenges to 

further progress in commercial lunar missions: 

o not having a permanent regulatory framework for commercial lunar missions, 

o NASA transitioning to a customer. 

Finding 1: A permanent regulatory framework for commercial lunar missions is 

part of a current Congressional discussion, embedded in the American Space 

Commerce Free Enterprise Act of 2017. The ASCFE framework builds on the 

'Mission Approval' that Moon Express received from the USG in 2016. The 

meeting participants fully support these efforts as part of the ASCFE. 

Finding 2: NASA can enable rapid development of the commercial lunar industry 

by offering to be a customer. The sooner NASA does this, the faster commercial 

capabilities will be developed. The range of capabilities offered would reflect the 

breadth of investigations that NASA could offer. 

There is a spectrum of services that NASA SMD and HEOMD could buy. For 

example, transportation services to lunar orbit, transportation to the lunar 

surface, rover services on the surface through buying samples or data. 

Commercial companies are already taking on scope and risk and will be able to 

attract more investments if they can show NASA as a customer. NASA can 

leverage that willingness, save time and dollars by crafting programs that take 

advantage of the new capabilities offered by commercial lunar companies. 

Finding 3: In addition to paying for payload flights, NASA should strongly 

consider buying transportation services, samples and/or data. In order for this to 

succeed, the nature of the samples/data required must be adequately specified. 

The benefit of this approach is all the technical and financial risk is on the 

company. NASA's risk is that the company fails and the ride, data or samples 

are not available or obtained. 

NASA can mitigate some of this risk by partnering with the company by investing 

dollars or resources or ex ertise i.e., establish a ublic- rivate artnershi . 

Finding 4: NASA should consider public-private partnerships for particularly 

difficult or risky activities to share the risk, increase mission cadence and the 

probability of success, and enhance the business case for the commercial 

partner. 

• CONCLUSION: There is a lot of enthusiasm for commercial lunar missions 

and capabilities of the private sector could enable a new era of lunar science 

and exploration. 

7 
62 

Sowers Biography 

Dr. George Sowers has 30 years of experience in the space transportation field. During a 

continuous span working for Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin and the United launch Alliance 

(UlA), Dr. Sowers helped develop over a dozen launch systems, including as the Chief Systems 

Engineer for Atlas V development. He recently retired from his position as VP and Chief 

Scientist of UlA where his team developed an architecture for fully reusable in-space stages 

fueled by propellant mined, refined and distributed in space. In 2016, Sowers became the first 

person to pubically set a price and business case for propellant delivered to a location in space. 

Dr. Sowers was the creator of the cislunar1000 vision being promoted by UlA. Dr. Sowers 

recently joined the faculty at the Colorado School of Mines where he will support the new 

Space Resources program. He holds a BS in Physics from GA Tech and a PhD in Physics from the 

University of Colorado. Dr. Sowers is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and 

Astronautics (AIAA). 
63 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Sowers. 

I’d like to thank all the witnesses for your testimony. The Chair 

now recognizes himself for five minutes for questions. 

Mr. Crusan, how could NASA leverage private sector technologies, products and services on future exploration concepts such 

as the potential deep space gateway or the hypothetical deep space 

transport? What elements are better suited to partnerships, and 

what aspects are more appropriate for a government-owned and operated effort? 

Mr. CRUSAN. Mr. Chairman, we’ve been analyzing those exact 

cases that you’ve been asking about. We have our Next STEP initiative related to the gateway activities and how we construct and 

actually build that critical infrastructure, and we’re trying to find 

that proper balance between government objectives and commercial 

objectives, both in the creation of that fundamental infrastructure 

but also in the utilization of that infrastructure as well. 

Lunar CATALYST now with the potential to buy lunar landed 

services, are another extension of that instead of building technologies that are only for our own use here at NASA but building 

technologies that are fundamental to the industry demand that 

they need as well. So through CATALYST, we’ve been sharing the 

vast wealth of knowledge we have at NASA, sharing it with the 

U.S. industry openly to allow them to make the maximum best use 

of that. In every one of these endeavors, we have to tread carefully, 

though, to find that proper balance, and that’s why we’ve been so 

deliberate about what we’ve been doing. 

Chairman BABIN. Well, then that’ll lead into the next thing I’d 

like to ask you about, the potential pitfalls of leveraging private 

sector investments in space. Are there any areas about which we 

should be cautious when it comes to partnerships for lunar exploration? 

Mr. CRUSAN. Yes, so in a couple areas of alignment of incentives. 

So expanding the marketplace is a function of commercial demand 

and government use as well, so trying to get a proper balance and 

making sure that the government isn’t expecting a higher level of 

performance that isn’t commercially sustainable in the marketplace 

and getting that balance correct. So buying services at a rate which 

the industry is going to utilize for non-NASA use as well is one of 

the strong pitfalls that I would advise. 

Chairman BABIN. Okay. And then to Mr. Richards, Thornton and 

Alexander, I’m pleased to see such a diversity of lunar landing capabilities being developed by your three companies, and it shows 

how the United States continues to lead the world in developing innovation and affordable solutions. Can each of our industry witnesses briefly explain what makes their lander unique and different from the others and so the Committee can better understand 

the differences and the capabilities between your services? We’ll go 

with you, Mr. Richards, first. 

Mr. RICHARDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So Moon Express’s approach has been to establish a family of vehicles that begins small 

and can grow with partnership with NASA, not presuming a dependency, but looking at the long tail of the market where we can 

do for lunar access what CubeSats did for access to low-Earth orbit. 

We believe there’s a big market here. So we’re starting with a 
64 

micro lander that can go in a very low-cost launch vehicle. When 

we started Moon Express, we were looking at missions that might 

cost $100 million or more to get to the Moon. With a combination 

of the current technology and the low-cost vehicles that are coming 

on the market, we can do initial precursor missions for under $10 

million of our cost. 

But those can scale up, and our modularity is key. So like rockets 

and especially being the manufacturer take advantage of modular 

systems and stages don’t get changed over time, our basic propulsion model scales up into larger and larger lander systems that can 

reach the Moon and deliver materials back. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you. Mr. Thornton? 

Mr. THORNTON. Thank you. So we are developing the Peregrine 

lunar lander. From the get-go, we are market-focused, so we say 

okay, what’s the market out there for payloads, what sizes is necessary, and then we design a lander and the scale that’s appropriate for that. So what we have determined is 265 kilograms of 

capacity serves the majority of the existing market for payload delivery. Our first mission to the Moon flies that commercially viable 

craft right from the get-go. It’s a single-set secondary vehicle that 

flies on a United Launch Alliance launch vehicle to low-Earth orbit 

and then we fly the rest of the way to the Moon. Once on the surface of the Moon, we become the local utility so we provide power, 

we provide communications for payloads that come with us. Some 

payloads can stay attached to the lander. Some payloads can deploy and drive across the surface and use our WiFi on the surface 

to talk back to Earth. So the lander itself is designed to be a simple, robust system. It’s single stage. There’s no separations, very 

few mechanisms to actually move on the spacecraft, so we’re all 

about simple reliability for robust delivery, and what we have 

found from our customers is that customers are very sensitive to 

any changes, substantial changes in spacecraft. The customers 

around the world tell us that if you change your spacecraft configuration mission to mission that they’re going to think of that next 

launch as a demonstration launch and they want to make sure that 

it’s a proven capability. So that’s why we have a single spacecraft 

designed from the get-go to address the commercial market, and we 

believe that it’s affordable enough to get that first flight demonstrated and to capture a large portion of the international market. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you. 

Now we’ll go to Mr. Alexander. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Blue Moon is designed as a large lander so it is designed to take more than 10,000 

pounds to the lunar surface when launched on an SLS, a NASA 

SLS rocket. So that vehicle, that same spacecraft lunar lander can 

be flown on a variety of different launch vehicles ranging from 

1,000 pounds of payload delivered to the surface all the way up to 

more than 10,000 pounds. So a single design does the in-space 

transfer as well as the landing down to the surface and carries 

with it that large payload capability. So it is designed to enable 

other missions. It’s designed to enable NASA to preposition logistics for future human missions, to provide resource utilization missions, delivery and access to the surface, or to provide landers like 
65 

Resource Prospector, a way of actually getting to the surface. It’s 

repeatable, scalable, and based on proven technologies. 

Chairman BABIN. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the 

witnesses. 

Now I’d like to recognize the Ranking Member from California, 

Mr. Bera. 

Mr. BERA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

So if I think about when I was a kid, probably six or seven years 

ago, and thinking about what I thought was the coolest Apollo mission when they sent up the lunar rover, the Moon buggy, and you 

think about how space was done then. It was NASA doing the 

launch vehicle, NASA doing the landing vehicle, in some ways 

NASA then doing the research vehicle, the Moon buggy. I want to 

make sure I’m thinking about this correctly. Let’s—and maybe this 

is a question for Mr. Crusan. Let’s say NASA is thinking about 

something like the Moon buggy or a research vehicle. They can now 

in this new world of space travel say okay, let’s do some competitive bidding, see if Moon Express is the right landing vehicle or, 

you know, Astrobotic or Blue Moon is the landing vehicle we want 

to use. They can also then say okay, what launch vehicle do we 

want to use? Do we want to do an Aerojet Rocketdyne rocket or a 

Blue Origin rocket or a SpaceX rocket, or ULA rocket? And so we’re 

creating this competitive marketplace where NASA in some ways 

could be the customer. Am I thinking about that correctly? 

Mr. CRUSAN. Absolutely. So the Apollo reference is an interesting 

one in that during the development of Apollo and many times we 

were the entire—we were the user of the entire industrial base, 

and in fact, a lot of the industrial base didn’t even exist at the 

time, and you think about that difference in that we had to pay the 

entire percentage of all the non-reoccurring costs in order to get a 

capability into an existence, and we were the only user of that at 

the end of the day so we also had to sustain it. What you now see 

are merging space economy activities, both launch vehicles and 

communication satellites and Earth observation work that’s going 

on now where now we can be a leveraged buyer of those capabilities, especially in low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous-type environments that we have, and then we can then stretch those commercial capabilities to start applying towards exploration initiatives, and it comes down that there’s—we have a mixed environment of traditional development with the high-risk, high-reliability 

needs that we have, and with commercial services and commercial 

technologies that we can apply into that environment that we need 

to execute the national mission. So at the same time, then we don’t 

have to sustain the entire industrial base anymore either, and 

there’s a very productive space sector that’s growing. 

Mr. BERA. And to the folks in the commercial sector, maybe Mr. 

Richards, Mr. Thornton, Mr. Alexander, are we looking at this— 

we’re creating a competitive economy here where it could be NASA 

as a customer but it could also be academia or others as a customer. Is that how you’re looking at your business model? 

Mr. RICHARDS. For Moon Express—thank you—we certainly are. 

We love the idea of NASA as a customer. They’ve certainly been 

a great technology partner. We’re building on the shoulders of giants and working shoulder to shoulder with giants, so that’s great, 
66 

but we’re looking at a global marketplace, and bringing the cost accessible to where university endorsements, I mean, we’ve got kids 

sending CubeSats into low-Earth orbit. We see the long tail of the 

market a great leverage for us to begin our lunar business and be 

able to scale up on the way, and I’m sure my friends will agree 

with me that competitiveness rocks, and we’re very much in favor 

of it. 

Mr. BERA. Same thing—same thoughts for Mr. Thornton and Mr. 

Alexander? 

Mr. THORNTON. Yes, I’d agree with the sentiments. We think of 

the market for lunar services as global. We’ve identified 115 payloads worldwide that want to fly to the surface of the Moon, and 

that’s a mix of government, international governments, domestic, 

small and big. We think of the smaller space agencies as the nonvertical space agencies. They need a little help because they don’t 

have their own spacecraft, they don’t have their own launch vehicles. We can enable that. One of our customers is the Mexican 

space agency, a perfect example how we are enabling their access 

to the surface of the Moon, and then we also see a mix of commercial interests as well. 

Mr. BERA. And same thing with Blue Origin? 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a large market 

out there of international, government and commercial activities, 

but I do also think that NASA should be leading this effort. The 

United States should be leading the world in returning to the Moon 

in terms of utilizing the Moon’s resources and so there’s a large 

role for NASA to play in that. 

Mr. BERA. Great. Excellent. 

Dr. Sowers, in your opening testimony you raised some interesting questions. Obviously there’s a value of that water on the 

Moon and that ice on the Moon, and I think, you know, it raises 

questions. Is this going to be the Wild West? Whoever gets to that 

water first, do they own that water? I mean, we’re talking about 

another planetary body. So, who owns that water? What country 

can claim that water, or is it our entire planet Earth? And then 

I would imagine there’s some urgency that this body ought to be 

thinking about those questions. You know, certainly how do you 

create the framework that addresses and creates some certainty for 

folks that are going to go out there and explore, creates that market but then also doesn’t stifle innovation. And I’d just be curious 

as you’re thinking through those questions, what things we ought 

to be thinking about as a body. 

Dr. SOWERS. That’s a very important question. You know, I view 

the space economy as a free market but the free market has to 

have constraints and controls. There also has to be a system of 

rights. So you raise the question, who owns it. You know, there 

needs to be the establishment of a framework of, if you will, property rights for space so that if a company invests in, you know, developing a resources that they can return—reap a return on that 

investment. You know, those are important. Enforcement of contracts, you know, how do we make sure that, you know, if some 

company buys something from a country, you know, that those contracts can be enforced. Then you have also the issue of physical security. You know, if there’s wealth in space, eventually there’s 
67 

going to be pirates in space, and so kind of have to have a way of 

ensuring the security of the enterprises that take place out there. 

Mr. BERA. Great. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, it looks like we might have some work ahead of 

us. 

Chairman BABIN. Absolutely. We’ll have another Texas oil boom 

out there but it’ll be water this time. Thank you very much. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, who is 

trying to get out of here to get his district ready. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Richards, Thornton and Alexander, you mentioned that you got help and encouragement from NASA. I wonder 

in 30 seconds or less each if you can briefly tell me what kind of 

assistance you got from NASA. 

Mr. RICHARDS. We’ve been partnering with NASA since the beginning with technology development so we’ve been given access. 

Sometimes we—most of the time we have to pay for that access but 

more recently with Lunar CATALYST, based on a mutual exchange, access to technology, test facilities, expertise, software, 

things that have displaced otherwise capital costs that we would’ve 

had to use investment money for. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. THORNTON. NASA has been a great partner of Astrobotic for 

a very long time. Most notably, the CATALYST program has been 

fantastic for us. It’s taking NASA’s best spacecraft engineers and 

landing engineers and fusing together with our technology to create 

a great vehicle. We just had our preliminary design review. We had 

20 NASA people in the room including another dozen people on the 

phone looking over our whole system and helping us out. It’s a first 

time for us so it’s great to have the best in the business part of 

the mission. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Blue Origin does not currently have a partnership with NASA on lunar lander activities. However, we do have 

a long history of cooperating with NASA on propulsion and other 

technologies. We’ve worked very well with NASA, and we appreciate their technical expertise and look forward to a partnership 

with NASA on the Blue Moon lunar lander. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. Mr. Crusan, I appreciate that NASA is trying 

to privatize what it can here and keep a long-term, I hope, focus 

on Mars. We’ve kind of helped incubate, move along, assist and encourage these companies. Have we made any agreements with 

them yet? I mean, how are we going to utilize them? 

Mr. CRUSAN. Yes. To date, we’ve done a no-exchange-of-funds 

Space Act Agreement where we haven’t exchanged any funds for 

that but just providing, as we said, the support services that you 

heard from the partners here, and what we are now looking at 

doing is actually buying landed delivery services in the next fiscal 

year here of actually buying the first ability to land small payloads, 

and that’s in our plans and our budget submit that we did this 

year. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. And tell me a little bit more about those. 
68 

Mr. CRUSAN. Yeah, so we’re talking initially about small landed 

services so small payloads of everything from scientific context to 

instruments to do single-point measurement related to volatiles to 

small technology demonstrations. This is a sign of our confidence 

of—growing confidence in the commercial industry, and managing 

a risk without getting too large or too costly payloads for us on the 

first maiden flights. So it’s that balanced risk approach of us giving 

confidence in them but also not risking large endeavors at this 

point at NASA. So it’s that balancing act that we’re doing with 

them as we’ve done with Commercial Cargo and such when were 

in the development phases for those. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. Have you signed any contracts yet? 

Mr. CRUSAN. No, we’ve not. The RFI was the first step towards 

that. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. And when do you anticipate we would be doing 

contractual agreements? 

Mr. CRUSAN. We’re preparing for the solicitation as we speak, basically was informed by the Request for Information that was done 

only a couple months ago. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. That’s good. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

Now I’d like to recognize the Ranking Member of the full Committee from Texas, the gentlewoman, Ms. Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Let me express my appreciation for your interest, motivation and 

enthusiasm for what you are doing, and hope that it’ll inspire the 

next generation of thinkers for the future. 

I want to ask you who you anticipate or do you have any ideas 

of who your customers will be from the private sector service for 

vacationing or whatever? How do you anticipate seeking them? 

Mr. RICHARDS. So that’s—thank you for that question. We already have customers so we’ve been marketing for a number of 

years now. An example is, we’ll be delivering a lunar telescope for 

a private customer starting with a precursor, then a large system 

to the south pole of the Moon in 2019, and this is a nice nexus of 

science, of commerce, of private investment capabilities with a global scientific foundation, but led by a U.S. entrepreneur. So that’s 

one of the examples of how science and commerce can intertwine. 

Our maiden mission has a full manifest, and we’re marketing into 

our future missions now. 

Ms. JOHNSON. How do you anticipate determining the cost for 

services? 

Mr. THORNTON. So first for us, it starts with the customer. We 

have customers the world over that are interested in flying, and I 

think that’s a really notable important thing because we started 

ten years ago, and 7, eight years ago, there were no customers. It 

was too new. People thought it was a little crazy, frankly, but all 

good ideas start as crazy ideas and then they become reality. So 

we have 115 customers interested, everything from space agencies 

to commercial organizations, even down to universities and people 

that are just looking to inspire folks. We have a time capsule from 

Japan that is collecting the dreams of children from Asia, and they 
69 

have more than 100,000 kids signed up sending their dreams. So 

we have all sorts, shapes and sizes of payloads attached. 

In terms of the pricing and how to address that, it’s about what 

can cover our costs fundamentally. The majority of our cost is the 

launch cost, so as the costs of the launch vehicles come down, that 

will drive our prices down as well. Part of the reason that we build 

the same spacecraft again and again is we’re looking to get that 

cost efficiency improved even more, but so far our price at $1.2 million per kilogram is accepted by the market and we already have 

numerous deals at that price point. 

Ms. JOHNSON. That sounds good. You know before now, there’s 

been lots of thought of attempting to retrieve or save artifacts from 

the Moon. Have you considered retrieving any of the artifacts or 

have you given that any thought? 

Mr. THORNTON. So we haven’t started looking at retrieving artifacts. We think of what’s on the Moon is memorials, permanent 

memorials, and one day, museums and potentially even national 

parks to go visit on the service of the Moon. Each one of our missions that landed a man on the Moon and all the precursors that 

led up to it, that’s a really important part of history. So we intend 

to certainly have a keep-out zone and make sure that we don’t land 

too close to it because it is possible to damage those if you land too 

close, but we think about it as a memorial for all time, and we 

think of our early landers the same way. We’re essentially sending 

a snapshot of humanity for our first mission, and it’s going to be 

a sampling of people all over the world. We have six nations flying 

with us on our first mission and many more that are interested in 

coming with us. So we’re all about making the Moon accessible to 

the world, and I think those first landings will be monuments to 

just that. 

Ms. JOHNSON. You know, several years ago I was trying to find 

a vehicle to try to preserve some of the debris and artifacts, and 

the only place I could find was under the Parks Act. And so when 

I introduced the resolution, the news had it that I was attempting 

to establish a park on the Moon. I was a little embarrassed, but 

young people in high schools were very concerned and very enthusiastic about the possibility of establishing a park on the Moon, 

which I didn’t have in mind at all. But what it reminded me of is 

how we do stimulate the young mind to think forward. So I encourage you to continue to think forward. Just don’t send us the bill. 

Thank you. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, ma’am. Thank you. 

Now I’d like to recognize the gentleman from Florida, Dr. Dunn. 

Mr. DUNN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It’s certainly 

exciting to have such an august panel and talking about a space 

economy that’s genuinely prosperous. That’s just so exciting to be 

in space. 

Let’s start with a lightning round of questions real quick if I can. 

What is the number one thing that you think is the most important 

to the United States as a whole, number one thing, just sort of a 

lightning round and we’ll go right down the panel. We’ll start with 

Mr. Crusan. 

Mr. CRUSAN. For me, it’s continued human presence in space. 
70 

Mr. RICHARDS. And expanding human presence in space with the 

United States in the lead of it. 

Mr. THORNTON. It’s making the Moon accessible to the world and 

U.S. leadership in doing so. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would agree that it’s U.S. leadership in space, 

and I think the Moon is the right focus for the near term. 

Dr. SOWERS. It’s creating that space economy and developing the 

propellant resources on the Moon. 

Mr. DUNN. Outstanding. So great answers. 

Again, just because we’re, you know, the Congress of the United 

States, Mr. Crusan, how do you think this affects national security? 

Mr. CRUSAN. So with space, you have resources. With resources 

come different demands and different agendas. So I think from a 

national security point of view, the understanding of fundamental 

resources that exist in our nearest neighbor is incredibly important 

for us. It can help influence our human spaceflight architectures 

for sending humans further out into space. So first order of understanding what is there and what is its value to us as the United 

States. 

Mr. DUNN. Great, great. 

Mr. Thornton, you mentioned you had 115 customers? Okay. So 

what’s the difference between your commercial customers and your 

government customers? 

Mr. THORNTON. Sure. Just to clarify, we have 115 payloads in 

our pipeline, so it’s our sales pipeline, but the difference that we 

have, about half of that is government, big and small around the 

world. Half of that is commercial. About half of the commercial 

part is new startups, and then the other half are established organizations. DHL, who is a partner and sponsor of ours, is an example of that commercial side. They see the innovative shipping to the 

Moon is an extension of their global shipping service and they’re 

happy to be a part of our mission. 

On the small size, people are seeing the capability of flying to the 

surface of the Moon as a means to potentially open their own businesses. We’re seeing that with human ashes. We’re seeing that— 

there’s groups that are interested in having races on the surface of 

the Moon, create like a NASCAR experience from the Moon. We’ve 

got groups that—we just signed a payload that wants to create a 

first laser communication node from the surface of the Moon, and 

that’s a huge step because that is two orders of magnitude more 

bandwidth than we would have otherwise. So radio is about 100, 

200 KBPS so it’s like a little bit more than a 56K modem, and then 

a gigabit per second, that’s faster than most home internet connections. So you could have virtual reality experiences and HD video 

and pictures streaming back from the Moon. So it really stands to 

have a fascinating and immersive experience for people back here 

on Earth. 

Mr. DUNN. Outstanding. Anything to add to that, Mr. Richards 

or Mr. Alexander? 

Mr. RICHARDS. Well, the excitement is genuine about the potential for the markets. We’ve got our heads down in the hard job 

right now of actually proving we can land on the Moon, and getting 

the technology right, it’s a very hard thing to do, and only three 

superpowers have ever done it. So while having great confidence 
71 

that these amazing markets are going to open up, we’re focused 

right now on getting it right, and not having all our eggs in one 

basket. We have purchased several launches. Although we look 

across the spectrum of emergent and existing launchers agnostically, anybody going our way to Earth orbit, we’d be happy to buy 

a ride if it’s at the right price, but we’re after collapsing the cost 

of access to the Moon and other destinations after Earth orbit. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would just add that, you know, returning to 

the Moon is a worthy endeavor. There are a lot of resources there 

as we talked about to bring into the economic sphere of humanity, 

and to do that, we need to go back in a fairly big way. So we have 

designed a lander that can take a lot of those capabilities to the 

surface of the Moon and eventually support human return to the 

Moon. It’s important to do from a U.S. leadership perspective. It’s 

important to do from an economic perspective but it requires a concerted effort. 

Mr. DUNN. We’re going to run out of time here. I have more 

questions than I could possibly ask in half an hour, but let me go 

back to Mr. Bera’s question because I thought that was a great one, 

and I didn’t really hear an answer. 

I’m going to ask Dr. Sowers, who owns the water, or who should 

own the water? You got around that when he asked you last time. 

Dr. SOWERS. Yeah, I think the people that discover it and develop it should own it. I mean, that’s a ‘‘should.’’ You know, I think 

we need to make sure that we can establish a framework, you 

know, regulatory or legal framework that makes that the case. 

Mr. DUNN. So pirates in space. I love that. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

Now we’re going to go to the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer. 

Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and Mr. Chairman, I’d 

like to start with an announcement, talking about pirates in space, 

that we had Andy Weir here, who wrote The Martian, last year, 

who’s a rock star. He was sitting right where Dr. Sowers it. And 

yesterday they announced his new book, Artemis, which is about 

a smuggler on the Moon, and it comes out November 14th, so 

that’ll be fun. 

First question really is for Mr. Crusan. In Mr. Thornton’s testimony, he talks about NASA authorization, Congress and NASA on 

authorizing Frontier class lander services similar to the Venture 

class launch services. What’s your perspective on that, and how 

does that fit in with NASA’s vision? 

Mr. CRUSAN. So it’s actually right in line with what we were 

thinking about doing here now is we’re proceeding towards actually 

buying landed services. That is in essence what he’s suggesting. It’s 

just a fundamental of what scale do you go to at what time, and 

we want to make sure that we’re buying services that are kind of 

on the same scale as industry is growing, so just matching that 

growth rate and having the government as a customer, not the sole 

provider or purchaser of services. That’s the balance that we’ve 

been seeking from the NASA side. 

Mr. BEYER. Great. Thank you. 

Mr. Crusan, Ranking Member Johnson asked a question about 

artifacts. As you develop the Lunar CATALYST program, has there 
72 

been discussion of the U.S. government artifacts on the Moon and 

any steps to protect and preserve them? 

Mr. CRUSAN. Yeah, in fact, actually, we did develop a standard 

and published it about interaction effects for any of the Apollo 

landing sites, and we worked collaboratively with the Google Lunar 

XPRIZE and actually many of the industry folks that are here at 

the table, and agreed on those standards and stand backs from 

those locations, making sure we don’t have things like plume interactions of dust settling and covering up footprints, and we publically posted those standards out there, and industry has accepted 

those as guidance for their future missions that they want to conduct. 

Mr. BEYER. Great. Thank you. 

Mr. Richards, you’ve clearly been a visionary in this for a long 

time. One of the big debates in this Committee, we talked to the 

previous NASA Administrator and said what’s the big picture, 

what’s the constancy of purpose with NASA, and he said very simply, ‘‘Mars.’’ So one of the debates here has been, do we go directly 

to Mars or do we go to the Moon first, and there’s a big division 

obviously within the space community about this. Is this development of the private sector Moon stuff a way to have our cake and 

eat it too? 

Mr. RICHARDS. So it’s all of the above. The Moon is not an off 

ramp to Mars, it’s an on ramp to Mars, and by building—you know, 

to go to space to stay, it has to pay, so by building out infrastructure and capabilities in a cislunar economy, we can assure that a 

balanced partnership between the government and the private sector will learn how to live off-planet, we’ll learn how to use the resources that are out there and that will dramatically lower the cost 

of going to Mars, and we’ll learn a lot about our human condition, 

things that humans have never experienced being that far from 

Planet Earth. We can practice those things and learn a lot by practicing at the Moon. 

But it’s not just the way to get to Mars. It’s also a definitive destination of itself. I look forward to the generation of kids that’ll 

look up and see lights on the Moon. You know, there’ll be a completely different perspective of humanity as a spacefaring and a 

multi-world civilization. 

And I would like to comment on, you know, a number of questions and who owns the Moon and who owns the water. So the 

United States Congress—thank you—answered that question for us 

in 2015. We will talk about that, but what you said was, those who 

go peacefully under the auspices and with due regard to the international treaties will own what we peacefully obtain, and this is 

not an appropriation question, but also with Moon Express. Before 

I could assure our investors that we could blaze a trail to the 

Moon, I had to blaze a trail through the regulatory framework that 

would allow us to go there. So Moon Express in 2016, thank you 

to a number of members in this room, achieved the first ever U.S. 

authorization for private sector missions beyond Earth orbit and to 

the Moon under the terms of the Outer Space Treaty. 

Mr. BEYER. Great. Thank you very much. 
73 

Mr. Alexander, I only have 30 seconds. One of the things you recommended was streamlining the licensing of commercial launches. 

How do we go about that process? 

Mr. ALEXANDER. I think there’s a couple of different issues. We 

have an issue with licensing of commercial launches, which currently the expendable launch vehicle framework that’s been used 

for the last 20 years is sort of duplicated between the Air Force and 

the FAA, and those of us developing reusable launch vehicles like 

New Glenn are being licensed under an FAA regime and so there’s 

reusable launch vehicles and so there’s a little bit of duplicative 

work that has to be done with the FAA and the Air Force. 

I think separately to Bob Richards’ comments there about licensing activities beyond launch and beyond Earth orbit that clarity 

that he responded or reflected in getting the first license for an activity on the Moon, finding a home for that within the U.S. government is also an important matter. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

And now I’d like to recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. 

Rohrabacher. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I 

can’t tell you how great it is to be here listening to people talk 

about a mission that we can accomplish. We sit here listening 

about people wanting to spend billions and billions of dollars on 

mission impossible, which is Mars, and I take it that right now we 

actually have the capability if we actually commit the resources to 

accomplish the mission to the Moon now. Isn’t that correct? Yes or 

no? 

Mr. CRUSAN. Technically no objections. 

Mr. RICHARDS. Absolutely the capability, and we would love to 

partner. 

Mr. THORNTON. Absolutely. All systems go. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes, absolutely. 

Dr. SOWERS. Yes. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Now, if we did that same question to 

people about well, are if we spend the billions of dollars for the 

Mars mission, are you sure we’re going to be able to accomplish 

this? I don’t think we would have anywhere near the same answers 

that we just got. 

And, you know, sometimes it is really difficult to get our country 

and our government and our bureaucracy even when it’s at NASA 

to sort of focus on what we can do even though we’re not doing it 

now, and I remember that when I first got here, which was a long 

time ago now in this very same Committee, that we had to force 

NASA into trying to do its mission around the Moon instead of 

around the equator of the Moon that we had to convince them 

maybe doing the orbit would be really important, and we actually 

had to force them to do it, and I will tell you because there were 

some visionaries who said there might be ice at the polar areas 

which we could use then as a very important component of future 

travel in space but also things we could do with hydrogen, et 

cetera. Let me note the person who made that argument to me 

originally is sitting right over there. His name is Jim Muncy, who 

is one of the real pioneers of—there you go, Jim. You get the credit, 
74 

and he should get the credit because he was a visionary and could 

see the importance of making sure whether there was water there 

or not, and why always, always go around the equator and not 

around the polar areas to find out what was going on in the Moon. 

So let me just suggest that this is a very exciting potential and, 

you know, a lot of people—you know, half the world—I don’t know 

if you know this—half the world when they look at the Moon, they 

see a man on the Moon, but the other half of the world sees what? 

A rabbit in the Moon. So when you look at the Moon next time, 

half the world doesn’t even seen a man in the Moon. One thing 

that really worked for us when we were leading the world when 

it came to the Moon and space projects is what the world looked 

up and they looked at the Moon and they say there are Americans 

on the Moon. That impressed the entire world. It’s time for us to 

impress the world again, the young people of the world and their 

own young people, and the potentials that you’ve talked about 

today are very exciting. 

Let me ask this. One of the things that I have advocated over 

the years when it comes to commercial space activities is, we 

should be encouraging them. Instead of giving them subsidies, we 

could give them tax breaks, and I have a piece of legislation that 

suggests commercial activity in space, zero gravity should be zero 

taxed. Would that type of approach be helpful to any of your operations in terms of making sure that the tax load that you wouldn’t 

have to be carrying the burden of a tax load up to space with you, 

and just your thoughts on zero gravity, zero tax, right down the 

line. 

Mr. RICHARDS. So quickly, as an interim measure, that certainly 

sounds attractive. You know, I believe that the first companies— 

the first trillionaire companies will be created through investments 

in space resources, so eventually that will be a tax base, but zero 

G, zero tax is great. You might also think about things like R&D 

tax credits for companies that typically invest in resource development, and it’s that type of money that we’re going to have to invest 

in space. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But of course, if you think you’re going to be 

successful and you’re saying there’s not going to be a capital gains 

tax on someone who invests in your company, that’s pretty powerful. 

Mr. THORNTON. I’d echo that it’s certainly an interesting idea 

and certainly could help. The space is really hard. It’s a very, very 

challenging environment, and building a business around space is 

doubly hard. So anything that can support that is certainly something we would support ourselves. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would echo what both of the gentlemen said, 

that, you know, revenue-based tax credits are helpful or tax rates, 

low tax rates, but also the R&D tax credits as well. 

Dr. SOWERS. You know, I think all of these guys are going to say 

that, you know, tax breaks look good to them. I think if we’re going 

to invest, I think, you know, maybe perhaps better leverage in our 

investment is some of the basic science and R&D. For example, you 

know, we need the guys with the mules and the picks on the Moon 

to see, you know, where the real motherlode of the ice is, and in-
75 

vestment in some of those kinds of things which actually, you 

know, lowers investment risk for commercial operation maybe also 

something to consider. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, tax breaks as compared to subsidies 

give greater decision-making to the entrepreneur, and when you 

were talking about subsidies, which have to be approved from government officials, you have more bureaucratic decision-making, and 

I would just suggest, Mr. Chairman, that we unleash our entrepreneurs and we will be very pleased with what—our future generations will be very pleased with our accomplishments. Thank you 

very much. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Dr. Babin. 

Thank you all for your testimony today. I want to say to Dr. Sowers, I have my Colorado School of Mines tie on today, and I want 

to applaud you for leading the space resources department at the 

college, so thank you very much. 

I have two themes I’d like to talk about. One is property rights 

and the other is Mars. To my friend, Mr. Rohrabacher, we’re going 

to get there by 2033. 

So let’s start with property rights. Mr. Richards, I’d like to talk 

to you about that. And I think you’re right. I think in 2015, we 

gave a lot of comfort to entrepreneurs such as yourself and the 

other companies to get out there, but I would ask you so the section I think you’re referring to is 51303, Asteroid Resource and 

Space Resource Rights, and it says ‘‘shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained including to possess, own, 

transport, use and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law including international 

obligations.’’ So what is the applicable law? I mean, I don’t want 

to be like a judge sitting up here but I think we need to—personally, I think we’ve got more work to do to provide the framework 

that Dr. Sowers was talking about. 

Mr. RICHARDS. There’s a lot more work to do. It’s a global conversation, and I applaud the United States for taking the step forward of explicitly saying what I think was implicit in the Outer 

Space Treaty. There are a number of treaties but the Outer Space 

Treaty is the predominant one that dictates how humans are going 

to behave in space and to each other in space. 

So saying that, staying away from the question of property rights 

and that term, although I think we know what it means in this 

chamber, internationally is incendiary at this point, and in Moon 

Express’s case, none of our investors said hey, make sure you have 

those property rights down or we can’t invest. That wasn’t the case. 

I believe that there will be an ongoing conversation. We don’t have 

to answer all the questions today but the step that was taken was 

a very forward step that was very much appreciated. 

The next step for us of getting the authorization under that law 

and in due regard to the Outer Space Treaty, even though there 

wasn’t a regulatory framework for us to even apply for a Moon Express mission, we created one out of thin air and with the support 

of many agencies received a one-time permission to do so. So this 

is still evolving, and it’s—the onus is on private sector individuals 
76 

and companies to behave properly and do things responsibly and 

think about them because it will be a global conversation. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. And I guess my concern, and Mr. Thornton 

and Mr. Alexander, if you guys want to chime in, is just, Dr. Sowers talked about pirates, but we’re talking about mining, we’re 

talking about taking resources, so, is there title? Is somebody jumping somebody else’s claim? Exactly how do you see this working? 

Because I think from our point of view as legislators, we need some 

help trying to beef this up a little bit so that we don’t have jumping 

claims or piracy or whatever. 

Mr. RICHARDS. It would be nice not to be in a reactive mode forever. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. All right. So let me ask Mr. Thornton. 

Mr. THORNTON. So in our view, the Commercial Space Launch 

Competitiveness Act of 2015, currently that’s sufficient for where 

we’re at. We don’t view that as a barrier for development or investment or partners to even invest or send payloads in the resources 

realm. So currently, we don’t see the strong push for additional 

change at the moment. 

It’s also reassuring that the government of Luxembourg recently 

had a similar thing where they could say that Luxembourg companies could own the rights for resources. So we’re starting to see 

international—— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Activity? 

Mr. THORNTON. — activity, and then also agreement with the 

norms that the United States is creating. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Alexander? 

Mr. ALEXANDER. I think it’s important for the U.S. government 

through the State Department to be talking internationally with its 

counterparts, particularly in the U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses 

of Outer Space about what the Space Treaty, Outer Space Treaty, 

allows and how we’re interpreting that. It’s important for us as an 

industry to have the certainty that comes with, like you said, with 

the 2015 law but also that it’s founded in the Outer Space Treaty, 

which basically say that those resources are available to everybody 

so that when we go, let’s say, to the Moon and discover water ice 

there, we’re not saying now we own every piece of resource on the 

Moon and every bit of water ice on the Moon; we’re saying, you 

know, we are able to utilize what we are able to extract and be 

able to sell that and have property rights over that but not rights 

to the entire Moon. So I think it’s important from a government 

perspective that we go out and explain what our interpretation of 

the treaty is and the framework that we’re establishing and lead 

by example. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. If you would indulge me with one 

more minute of questions? 

Chairman BABIN. Can I make one—— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Yes. 

Chairman BABIN. —just say one thing? And what you guys are 

talking about demonstrates the importance of why the House and 

the Senate need to get this American Space Free Enterprise Act 

completed. Go ahead. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. So to Dr. Sowers and Mr. Crusan on the Mars 

theme I’d like to talk about. How do you see us working with the 
77 

private sector or international partners and going to the Moon and 

developing some commercial activities up there? How does that 

help us in your opinions to get us to Mars? Dr. Sowers? 

Dr. SOWERS. Well, I’ll just give you one example. If you can develop the water resource on the Moon into propellant, there’s studies that have been done, there was a recent one done out of MIT 

that suggested that you could reduce the cost of a Mars mission by 

about a factor of three. You know, clearly there’s assumptions in 

there, you know, and you have to assume things about the nature 

of the resource and the cost to extract it and refine it but with reasonable assumptions, you know, a factor of three seems quite doable. So, you know, the resources on the Moon could be immensely 

valuable in helping us get to Mars. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Crusan? 

Mr. CRUSAN. Yeah, these are not mutually exclusive activities. 

Our human spaceflight plans right now, we’re working on concepts 

of deep space gateway and transport-type architecture that then 

also working with the commercial industry on landed and surfaces, 

we can conduct tests of technologies, advancement of understanding of the resources, if the resources are there, is there a 

means by which to get them from there to a staging point that we 

can use for deep space transportation in addition to that. So these 

activities don’t need to be mutually exclusive. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. All right. Thank you, and thanks, Mr. Chair. 

I yield back. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

I want to thank the witnesses for their very valuable and exciting testimony today and your answers, and the Members for the 

questions that we’ve asked. The record will remain open for two 

weeks for additional comments and written questions from Members, because I know I have one that I would like to ask as well, 

but I want to say this: Thank you for being here. 

This meeting is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:32 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(79) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
80 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Mr. Jason Crusan 
81 

have the potential to improve access to the Moon and other destinations by both 

NASA and non-NASA customers. Through initiatives such as Lunar Cargo 

Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (CATALYST), NASA continues 

to encourage private ventures to develop both the space capabilities and the 

associated business plans that could expand the opportunities to send NASA 

science, exploration, or technology demonstration payloads to the Moon or other 

destinations in space. To the extent that private investments can help lower the 

cost of space access and increase the frequency of missions, NASA will seek 

ways to work with the private sector to enhance and complement our own plans 

for space science and exploration. 

In 2014, NASA introduced Lunar CATALYST. The purpose of the initiative is to 

encourage the development of U.S. private-sector robotic lunar landers capable of 

successfully delivering payloads to the lunar surface using U.S. commercial 

launch capabilities. Commercial robotic lunar lander capabilities could address 

emerging demand by private customers who wish to conduct activities on the 

Moon and could also enable new science and exploration missions of interest to 

the larger scientific and academic communities. These emerging commercial 

capabilities, in turn, have the potential to make space exploration more affordable 

and sustainable as NASA expands human presence into deep space. 

Future commercial lunar transportation capabilities could support science and 

exploration objectives such as sample returns, geophysical network deployment, 

resource utilization, and technology advancements. 

In the longer term, commercial development of lunar resources (a stated goal of 

many nascent commercial lunar companies) requires scientific understanding of 

the Moon. For example, data about lunar geology, volatiles, and regolith 

trafficability etc., is knowledge required to benefit commercial interests and is 

also of interest to the broader scientific communities. Therefore, NASA believes 

both sectors could benefit. 

c. What can be done now to ensure that the Moon is explored for the mutual benefit 

of the science community and the private sector? 

Answer: Please see response to Question #I b, above. NASA's support for the 

development of commercial lunar capabilities is intended to also benefit the 

Agency's own science and exploration missions. 

2. Does NASA require that partnerships with industry on lunar exploration contribute in 

some way to advancing NASA's mission? If not, why not? To what extent are the current 

partnerships between NASA and the private sector primarily serving NASA's objectives 

and to what extent are they primarily serving private sector interests? 

Answer: An important part of NASA's strategy is to partner with the commercial space 

industry to assist the Agency in achieving its strategic goals and objectives. NASA's 

collaborative efforts are fostering innovation and a growing commercial space industry, 

Page 2 of7 
82 

while transforming capabilities and accelerating technologies needed to achieve national 

strategic goals. 

As noted above, NASA's Lunar CATALYST was designed to encourage the 

development of U.S. private-sector robotic lunar landers capable of successfully 

delivering payloads to the lunar surface using U.S. commercial launch capabilities. 

NASA's collaboration with industry through CATALYST, such as providing technical 

expertise and access to NASA's testing facilities, is a modest investment that has 

increased the private sector's rate of progress. Future commercial lunar transportation 

capabilities could make new science and exploration missions more affordable and 

viable, such as sample returns, geophysical network deployment, resource utilization, and 

technology advancements. 

Earlier this year, NASA issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking ideas from 

industry for the Agency to possibly participate in existing or future commercial missions 

to the Moon. The Agency is interested in assessing the availability of a commercial 

launch from Earth to the lunar surface to provide landing services as early as Fiscal Year 

2018, and through the next decade. This approach offers the Agency the potential to 

simultaneously address high-priority science, critical strategic objectives related to 

exploration, and technology demonstration, using commercially-provided domestic space 

services and hardware. 

3. NASA has experience partnering with the private sector in space activities. Two 

companies arc flying resupply missions to the ISS. NASA is also collaborating with U.S. 

companies to develop systems for transporting astronauts to the ISS to end our reliance 

on Russian rockets. How do the goals of the Lunar CATALYST program compare with 

the goals of the other public-private partnerships NASA has been carrying out, and are 

there any "lessons learned" that should be applied to the lunar partnerships? 

Answer: The Agency employs several kinds of mechanisms to work with the commercial 

sector to advance U.S. space capabilities, including- but not limited to- Federal 

Acquisition Regulation (FAR)-based contracts to fulfill Agency requirements, and 

partnerships using Space Act Agreements (SAAs), just two one of the mechanisms 

NASA uses to support and encourage commercial innovation. The Commercial Resupply 

Service (CRS) contracts, under which Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and 

Orbital ATK have been providing cargo resupply to the International Space Station (ISS), 

are examples of the former. NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services 

(COTS) and NASA's Lunar CATALYST initiatives both represent examples ofNASA 

using Space Act Agreements to provide support to industry partners developing 

commercial space capabilities that could eventually support both government and 

commercial users. Both initiatives required industry to focus on the commercial market 

by keeping "skin in the game." While COTS provided for payments to industry, Lunar 

CATALYST is a no-funds-exchanged activity and provides only in-kind contributions in 

the form of NASA expertise and access to NASA facilities. NASA is pleased with the 

progress being made by our three Lunar CATALYST commercial partners. The 

particular approaches to be employed in future lunar partnerships- as well as applicable 

lessons learned from previous partnerships- will be dependent on a variety of factors. 

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83 

4. The House Appropriations Committee singled out the Lunar CATALYST program in the 

legislative report accompanying its FY 2018 Appropriations bill. The Committee 

proposed up to $30 million be provided for Lunar CATALYST activities, including a 

lunar lander demonstration. 

a. What is the current funding level for the Lunar CATALYST program? 

Answer: NASA's Lunar CATALYST initiative is currently supporting three 

companies through no-exchange-of-funds Space Act Agreements. NASA is 

providing engineering expertise, hardware and software, and test facilities to these 

companies. NASA Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) lander technology 

activities planned in FY 2018 include $20 million for both Lunar CATALYST 

Partner and general Lander Support along with beginning the funding required to 

support commercial landed services. 

b. Based on the plans of some companies and the Google Lunar XPRIZE 

competition under which participant teams are required to land on the Moon, 

would lunar lander demonstrations happen anyway regardless of additional 

NASA investment? Is there any benefit to conducting an additional demonstration 

in which NASA is involved? If so, what? 

Answer: NASA defers to private sector organizations for details about their 

business plans and levels of investment in lunar missions. As noted above, the 

Agency is supporting the development of commercial lunar capabilities through 

efforts such as Lunar CATALYST. NASA believes such capabilities can benefit 

both commercial and Government-sector space exploration. 

c. lfthe provision for a NASA lunar lander demonstration was included, how would 

NASA ensure that the demonstration provider is competitively selected? 

Answer: NASA's Lunar CATALYST partners were competitively selected. The 

Agency is considering issuing a solicitation for commercial landed services along 

with solicitation(s) for small payloads (<10 kg) that could be available for 

commercial transportation to the Moon as early as FY 2018. Should NASA issue 

such a lunar cargo transportation solicitation, the provider(s) would be selected on 

a competitive basis. 

5. Under Lunar CATALYST agreements between NASA and the partners, what milestones 

do partners need to meet and what is the nature of those milestones? To date, have Lunar 

CATALYST partners met their agreed upon milestones, including financial milestones? 

If not, which milestones are proving to be the most challenging? What will NASA do if 

milestones are not met? 

~:The Lunar CATALYST partners must achieve technical as well as financial 

milestones under their no-funds-exchanged Space Act Agreements. The technical 

milestones include major events, such as completing design reviews, assembly and 

environmental testing of lander subsystems, and rocket engine tests. The financial 

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84 

milestones ensure that the companies are developing viable business plans and raising 

sufficient funds from private investors and payload customers. 

• Astrobotic has completed 7 of 20 milestones, including the Preliminary Design 

Review for their Peregrine lander. Astrobotic has also booked nine payload customers 

for their first flight. 

• Masten Space Systems has completed 14 of22 milestones, including testing of the 

main engine for their terrestrial demonstrator vehicle and all of their financial 

milestones. 

• Moon Express has completed 7 of 16 milestones, including detailed design of their 

MX-1 E lander, tethered flight testing, full funding for their first lunar mission, and 

signing a launch contract with Rocket Lab. 

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85 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

"Private Sector Lunar Exploration" 

Mr. Jason Crusan, Director, Advanced Exploration Systems, NASA 

Question submitted by Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson. House Committee on Science, 

Space, and Tcchnologv 

l. A number of companies that aspire to reach the Moon have discussed sending their 

vehicles and personnel to areas ofthe lunar surface where artifacts remain from prior 

U.S. government landings and activities on the Moon, including fi:om the Apollo 

program. Some of these companies have also expressed interest in bringing back artifacts 

from prior lunar landings. Do you believe that prior landing sites and artifacts, such as 

those from the Apollo missions, should be accessible to commercial interests or should 

the sites be protected for historical and scientific reasons? 

Answer: In 20 J 1, NASA established guidelines to protect lunar historic sites and 

preserve ongoing and future science on the Moon. NASA recognized that many 

spacefaring nations and commercial entities were making plans to send spacecraft to the 

Moon, with some even planning to land near and/or visit historic sites with rovers or 

hopping spacecraft. The Agency, in consultation with industry, historians, scientists and 

other stakeholders, assembled the guidelines using, for example, data from previous 

lunar studies and analysis of the unmanned lander Surveyor 3's samples after Apollo 12 

landed nearby in 1969. Experts from the historic, scientific, t1ight-planning communities 

as well as representatives from the Google Lunar X -Prize contestants also contributed to 

the technical recommendations. The guidelines do allow for rovers and hoppers to safely 

access many sites and provide suggested areas of scientific or technical interest. The 

guidelines do not represent mandatory U.S. or intemational requirements, rather NASA 

provided them to help the lunar mission planners preserve and protect historic lunar 

artifacts and potentia! science opportunities for future missions. 

Please see the following link to access the guidelines noted above: 

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/617743main NASA-USG LUNAR HISTORIC SITES RevA-508.pdf 

a. If you believe that the Apollo sites should be accessible to commercial interests 

what do you envision as being an acceptable level of access? 

Answer: Yes, NASA believes that Apollo and other lunar heritage and scientific 

sites should be accessible to commercial interests; hence Agency efforts to 

establish the voluntary guidelines outlined in the response to Question #1, above. 

In addition, NASA can provide additional guidance to mission planners as 

needed. 

Page 6 of7 
86 

b. Jfyou believe that the Apollo sites should be protected for historical and scientific 

reasons, how do you think we should best protect those artifacts from being 

disturbed by future missions to the Moon? 

Answer: Please see response to Question #I, above. The guidelines established 

by NASA do not represent mandatory U.S. or international requirements, they are 

intended to help lunar mission planners preserve and protect historic lunar 

artifacts and potential science opportunities for future missions (NASA, as the 

current primary customer for many of the companies planning lunar exploration 

missions, does not plan to fund landed missions that would impinge upon or 

otherwise negatively impact these sites). 

Page 7 of7 
87 

Responses by Mr. Bob Richards 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

"Private Sector Lunar Exploration'' 

Mr. Bob Richards, Founder and CEO, Moon Express, Inc. 

Question submitted by Ranking Member Ami Bera, House Committee on Science Space and 

Technology 

1. Is your company capable of carrying out missions to the Moon without a NASA financial 

contribution, i.e., are you depending on NASA partnerships and/or funding to implement 

your plans, at least in the near-term? How do you foresee that evolving over time? 

Answer: Our business model does not depend on NASA for financial contributions to 

development, though we have, of course, benefitted tremendously from the in-kind 

assistance provided by NASA through the Lunar CATALYST program as described in 

my testimony. We have the private investment and non-NASA customers necessary to 

support at least our first mission to the Moon and do not intend to be reliant on NASA for 

our maiden flight. We also have a primary commercial customer for our second mission 

to the Lunar South Pole, planned for 2019. 

That being said, having NASA as a customer and partner would be extremely beneficial 

and enable us to undertake more ambitious missions more quickly. We are not asking for 

charity, however. By buying services from Moon Express [and other commercial 

providers], NASA will be able to scout the Moon for scientific and exploration purposes 

at a fraction of the cost of a traditional mission. 

With leadership from NASA, we can start a virtuous cycle. As NASA procures more 

commercial services in this fashion, the more affordable such services will become. As 

prices drop, new players, such as universities and philanthropic organizations, will be 

able to afford to conduct missions of their own, and that will improve efficiencies and 

capabilities even further. To us, this is the "long tail of the market" that could be very 

lucrative as a business, and very beneficial to enabling new generation of lunar and 

planetary scientists. The next decade could see space science flourish as never before, 

despite the tight fiscal environment. 

2. Last August, Moon Express became the first commercial entity to receive a favorable 

payload determination from the FAA for a mission to land on the Moon. That is a major 

milestone for the commercial space industry. Can you describe the process your company 

went through to get this determination from the FAA? 

Answer: Moon Express proposed to leverage FAA's existing payload review process for 

the company's maiden lunar mission. In addition to the usual requirements for a payload 

review, Moon Express offered a series of "voluntary disclosures" to assure FAA and 

other interested Federal agencies that the mission would not violate the United States' 

obligations under international law, implicate national security concems, or interfere with 
88 

domestic or foreign activities in space. Moon Express called the proposed ad-hoc 

framework a "Mission Approval". These disclosures were incorporated into the 

company's payload review application and were thus considered by the Federal 

government to be binding enough to satisfy the U.S. government's obligation, under 

Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, to "authorize and supervise" American private 

sector activity in space. This led to Moon Express receiving the first federal authorization 

for a commercial lunar mission, in 2016. 

While we greatly appreciate the work of all of the Federal agencies involved in 

authorizing our mission, we strongly support this committee's efforts to provide a clearer 

pathway through which the Federal government can "authorize and supervise" nontraditional space activities that are not obviously covered by the existing regulatory 

structures. 

3. A 2007 National Academies report, "The Scientific Context for the Exploration of the 

Moon", found that data sets that are needed to facilitate resource utilization on the Moon 

are the same as those needed for research to understand the geochemistry of the Moon. 

To what extent, if at all, have you explored the potential for partnering with the scientific 

community to obtain such data? 

Answer: An important part of the Moon Express business case is to enable low cost 

scientific investigations of the Moon through commercial robotic spacecraft. NASA is 

very interested in this model. Moon Express engages regularly with the lunar scientific 

community to better understand its needs, and we employ a world renowned lunar 

scientist, Dr. Paul Spud is as our chief scientist through the Lunar & Planetary Institute. 

We believe that there may be excellent opportunities for commercial companies such as 

ours to partner with NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), Human Exploration 

and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) and Space Technology Mission 

Directorate (STMD) to conduct low-cost lunar missions that can conduct important 

scientific research, answer questions about lunar resources available for exploration use, 

and test out exciting new technologies. In November 2016, NASA released a Request for 

Information seeking information from potential partners to gather data on small payloads 

that could be delivered to the surface of the moon as early as the 2017-2020 timeframe 

using emerging U.S. commercial lunar cargo transportation service providers. 

[h ttps ://www. nasa. gov I feature/ nasa -seeks-additional-information-on-small-! unar-surfacepayloads]. 

4. The Google Lunar XPRIZE competition was announced almost exactly one decade ago. 

a. How important has the Google Lunar XPRIZE been to spurring private sector 

interest in lunar exploration over that time period? 

Answer: The Google Lunar XPRIZE played a pivotal role in inspiring 

entrepreneurs to examine commercial opportunities for lunar exploration. A new 

generation of commercial companies were founded in part because of the 

incentive provided by the large prize values at stake. 

Page 2 of5 
89 

b. In what ways has the Lunar XPRIZE spurred Moon Express to be where it is 

today, to be, as you state, "building toward our maiden lunar mission next year." 

Answer: The Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP) competition has inspirational roots 

and legacies dating back to heroic efforts in the 1990's at commercial lunar 

business cases. In turn, the competition has inspired a number of aspects of 

today's emerging commercial lunar industry. I was proud to be at the launch event 

of the prize on September 13,2007, joining in the enthusiasm and optimism of 

the unveiling of this incredible new challenge. Soon afterwards, 1 was the first 

official registrant in the competition with a precursor company to Moon Express. 

I applaud XPRIZE and Google for issuing a bold challenge with a big prize 

attached, and the GLXP is an important element in the landscape. That being said, 

Moon Express's; business model predates the competition and the company has 

never been dependent on, or primarily driven by, the opportunity to win the 

GLXP. 

c. Do you anticipate that industry will continue to take on unique and challenging 

problems in space even after the XPRIZE competition concludes? 

Answer: There is no doubt in my mind that the amazing amount of 

entrepreneurial energy unleashed by that the Google Lunar XPRIZE will continue 

to take on unique and challenges problems in space even after the competition is 

over, whether or not any prize is won. The genie will not go back in the bottle. It 

should also be noted that the GLXP has spurred international competitors to enter 

the commercial lunar industry, so from the perspective of Moon Express the prize 

is a double-edged sword. 

Thus, leadership from the Federal government, and NASA in particular, is crucial. 

If NASA continues to build on and expand successful initiatives such Lunar 

CATALYST, NextSTEP, and the commercial cargo and crew programs, progress 

will be much more rapid than if the agency turns inward and returns to more 

traditional ways of doing business. 

Page 3 ofS 
90 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

"Private Sector Lunar Exploration" 

Mr. Bob Richards, Founder and CEO, Moon Express, Inc. 

Question submitted by Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson. House Committee on Science. 

Space. and Technologv 

I. A number of companies that aspire to reach the Moon have discussed sending their 

vehicles and personnel to areas of the lunar surface where artifacts remain from prior 

U.S. government landings and activities on the Moon, including from the Apollo 

program. Some of these companies have also expressed interest in bringing back artifacts 

from prior lunar landings. Do you believe that prior landing sites and artifacts, such as 

those from the Apollo missions, should be accessible to commercial interests or should 

the sites be protected for historical and scientific reasons? 

a. If you believe that the Apollo sites should be accessible to commercial interests 

what do you envision as being an acceptable level of access? 

Answer: The Apollo program inspired me and millions of others of space 

enthusiasts to reach for the stars. I would never want to jeopardize the historical 

legacy of my heroes the brave astronauts who landed on the Moon and the 

thousands of scientists, engineers, and other ground-based personnel who 

supported them. At Moon Express, we look forward to working with Congress 

and NASA to ensure that any proposed activities of ours that could potentially 

affect lunar heritage sites appropriately balance historical, scientific, educational, 

and commercial interests. The determination of what is an "acceptable level of 

access" for such missions will probably be very fact-specific. For example, a 

mission to collect an artifact or document a landing site for educational or 

scientific purposes might deserve a higher level of access than one with purely 

economic motivations. 

In our 'Mission Approval' application, discussed above, we consulted with NASA 

and provided covenants to respect and not interfere with any U.S. artifacts or 

heritage sites. The application referenced as our guideline NASA's 2011 white 

paper on "Recommendations to Space-Faring Entities: How to Protect and 

Preserve the Historic and Scientific Value of U.S. Government Lunar Artifacts" 

[https://www.nasa.gov/dircctorates/heo/library/reports/lunar-artifacts.html]. 

Page 4 ofS 
91 

b. If you believe that the Apollo sites should be protected for historical and scientific 

reasons, how do you think we should best protect those artifacts from being 

disturbed by future missions to the Moon? 

Answer: As noted above, this will likely be a very mission-specific inquiry. I 

suspect that a company planning on undertaking a mission in the vicinity of these 

sites would, at the very least, want to consult with NASA on proper prophylactic 

measures. I believe that the recent NASA authorization act requested a study from 

the Executive Branch on this issue and I look forward to reading that study and its 

recommendations. 

Page 5 of5 
92 

Responses by Mr. John Thornton 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

"Private Sector Lunar Exploration" 

Mr. John Thornton, Chief Executive Officer, Astrobotic Technology, Inc. 

Question submitted by Ranking Member Ami Bera, House Committee on Science. Space, and 

Technology 

I. Is your company capable of carrying out missions to the Moon without a NASA financial 

contribution, i.e., are you depending on NASA partnerships and/or funding to implement 

your plans, at least in the near-term? How do you foresee that evolving over time? 

Answer: Astrobotic is capable of carrying out missions to the Moon without a NASA 

financial contribution in the form of a payload reservation; however, the schedule risk for 

Mission One reaching the Moon in 2019 is significantly increased without a commitment 

from NASA in FY 2018 to purchase payloads. Many of our customers are waiting to see 

what NASA's payload commitment will be on commercial delivery providers to help 

calibrate their own commitment decisions. This is especially true for international space 

agencies that take cues from NASA's leadership. Many will use NASA's purchase of 

service as a confidence gauge and an evaluation of our service. 

At the same time, it should be noted that lunar delivery is a nascent market with multiple 

international competitors, many of whom are subsidized by their local governments. 

Should NASA not move forward now with an imminent payload commitment that helps 

to complete our manifest. the risk increases that our competitors can capture a significant 

portion of market share during the time period in which Mission One is delayed, and 

potentially leave NASA without a U.S. domestic payload delivery service provider that 

has a substantial market outside of U.S. government customers. Swift action by NASA to 

purchase payload services will help ensure American market share for lunar delivery, and 

provide the agency much needed access to the Moon going forward. 

In addition to a NASA payload buy, Astrobotk wntinu.:s to rely on the expertise and 

assistance of our partners at NASA through the NASA Lunar CATALYST program and 

the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) program. Astrobotic is planning to continue 

utilizing CATALYST for the next 3-fiscal years based on NASA's current plans to 

extend the program beyond its current term. Should that change. our ability to complete 

Mission One would be severely hindered. Following Mission One, Astrobotic intends to 

no longer rely on CATAL YST/AES assistance, and instead would seek to carry NASA 

payloads to the Moon on a regular basis much like the Launch Services Program at 

procures launches for NASA payloads. This model was outlined in our testimony as the 

"Frontier Class Lander Services" program for small robotic landers and rovers to the 

lunar surface-- similar to the Venture Class Launch Services program for small launch 

vehicles-- within the NASA Launch Services Program. 
93 

2. In your prepared statement, you state that Astrobotic has entered into 11 non-NASA deals 

as well as a sales pipeline of 115 deals valued at over $1 billion. Have financial 

commitments been made with respect to the 11 deals? Given the level of customer 

interest that you have described, to what extent does your business case rely on NASA 

investments, either in financially contributing to demonstrations or as a regular customer 

of lunar lander services? 

Answer: Nearly all of our !!-payload deals involve financial commitments, which is a 

requirement for payloads to sign up for Astrobotic's first mission. The only exception 

would be a payload called Moon Ark, which Astrobotic is carrying as a philanthropic 

arrangement in-kind. All other payloads on the manifest require significant financial 

commitment upfront and over time. To be clear. Astrobotic has received significant 

revenue from commercial and international payload delivery sales to the Moon for years 

several years. Our service does not rely on NASA investments, however the company 

does lean heavily on in-kind technical advice and access to agency testing capabilities 

provided through the NASA Lunar CATALYST Program, which has been a successful 

public-private partnership that transfers expertise and allows Astrobotic to utilize 

NASA's world-class facilities for the development of our first mission. 

3. A 2007 National Academies report, "The Scientific Context for the Exploration of the 

Moon", found that data sets that are needed to facilitate resource utilization on the Moon 

are the same as those needed for research to understand the geochemistry of the Moon. 

To what extent, if at all, have you explored the potential for partnering with the scientific 

community to obtain such data? 

Answer: Astrobotic regularly engages in dialogue with the scientific community to help 

them understand how their instruments and payloads would best integrate with the 

Peregrine Lunar Lander. Given that Peregrine is a modular delivery vehicle, the lander 

alone will likely not be adequate for obtaining data that advances lunar science; rather 

instruments and payloads built and provided by the scientific community and placed on 

Peregrine will allow them to obtain the data they need. 

Realistically. a funding source and mechanism are still required by the scientific 

community to get these payloads built and then sent to the Moon on commercial 

providers like Astrobotic. A payload buy by NASA would ideally involve a call for 

payload ideas from the science and exploration community, (building on the RFI for 

Lunar payloads issued by NASA last year) which would allow the scientific community 

to put forth its best ideas to obtain much needed data sets. NASA would then be in a 

position to prioritize and fund those payload concepts, and make judgments on which 

should fly first on commercial providers. 

4. In your written testimony you state that "extracting water ice from the Moon will be a 

technically challenging endeavor that will require substantial research and development, 

technology demonstrations, and plain hard work and persistence over many years." 

Page 2 of 4 
94 

a. Do you have a sense of how far along we are in that process today and how much 

farther we need to be? 

Answer: NASA's LRO/LCROSS mission was an important first step in obtaining 

data on lunar water ice. What is needed now is to ground truth the data with a 

suface resource-prospecting mission to the lunar poles to obtain precise 

measurement of the volatiles and carry out the first JSRU experiments of water 

extraction from the surface of the Moon. Prospecting is a key first step before 

significant investments can be made to\vard utilizing resources. 

With that in mind. Astrobotic enthusiastically supports NASA's proposed 

Resource Prospector mission, which would obtain this much-needed first 

demonstration sometime in the early 2020s. Resource Prospector would answer 

many important questions, like where the water is located, how much is there. and 

how difficult is it to extract? With these insights in hand, the private sector can 

begin to take steps toward making this resource available as a commodity through 

extraction, harvesting. storage, and transfer of water ice for propellants and life 

support. 

b. When do you believe we will have the technical and operational capability to 

extract water ice from the Moon? 

Answer: The first step is to establish low cost lunar transportation services, which 

is the intent of Astrobotic's Mission One. Astrobotic's first mission will 

demonstrate the delivery of payloads to the Moon using Peregrine, and begin a 

regular cadence of low cost flights to the Moon of about once a year following the 

first flight in 2019. With the establishment of a regular pipeline of delivery 

missions in place. and a successful resource prospecting mission, Astrobotic 

forecasts that an aggressive program to extract and utilize water ice could begin 

seeing revenue as a business in under .1 0-years. 

Page 3 of 4 
95 

Æ 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

"Private Sector Lunar Exploration" 

Mr. John Thornton, Chief Executive Otticer, Astrobotic Technology, Inc. 

Question submitted by Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson, House Committee on Science 

Space, and Technology 

I. A number of companies that aspire to reach the Moon have discussed sending their 

vehicles and personnel to areas of the lunar surface where artifacts remain from prior 

U.S. government landings and activities on the Moon, including from the Apollo 

program. Some of these companies have also expressed interest in bringing back artifacts 

from prior lunar landings. Do you believe that prior landing sites and artifacts, such as 

those from the Apollo missions, should be accessible to commercial interests or should 

the sites be protected for historical and scientific reasons? 

Answer: Astrobotic believes the landing site and artifacts from the Apollo missions 

should be strictly off limits to commercial entities, and be carefully preserved for future 

generations. Astrobotic intends to adhere to the guidelines drafted by NASA to protect 

historic sites on the Moon. We commend you and other members of the committee for 

your efforts to send a clear signal that these sites should be protected as historical 

monuments, and not disturbed for commercial or private benefit. 

a. If you believe that the Apollo sites should be accessible to commercial interests 

what do you envision as being an acceptable level of access? 

Answer: Not applicable. 

b. If you believe that the Apollo sites should be protected for historical and scientific 

reasons, how do you think we should best protect those artifacts from being 

disturbed by future missions to the Moon? 

Answer: Astrobotic recommends the U.S. Government lead the formation of any 

formal regime to protect Apollo sites given that these sites contain hardware that 

is the property of the U.S. Government. Astrobotic recommends the U.S. 

Government work closely with international pmtners on any such potential 

regimes, given the international nature of space activities at destinations like the 

Moon. 

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