At present, the project is not a government priority, although work completed to date suggests that research among devoted investigators will progress at a low level. The original purposes of the effort were to establish a permanent base on the Moon and to begin the human exploration of Mars by landing a crew on the surface of that planet. The first two missions were to be designated orbiters, designed to obtain global data coverage by a number of scientific instruments. Later, Artemis rovers designed for landing on the surface of the Moon were projected to be as large as 200 kilograms. A broad segment of the industrial and academic communities, as well as DOE, DOD, and other NASA centers, have been solicited to propose the optimum instrument payload for the first lunar rover, should the initiative gain new impetus.
Guidelines propose that all portions of the payload be small, simple, cheap, and quick.
Priorities are schedule, cost, risk, and performance. If there is no free return mission operations requirement, then the Apollo 17 site in the valley of Taurus Littrow should also be considered. The choices of either of these previous Apollo landing sites for the FLO would avail more time for resource delineation and for the collection of scientific data by the rover. Considerable overlap is projected for both rover activities and resource delineation. Analytical requirements on the moon for both purposes can be satisfied by a modest instrument payload that can be accommodated within the given weight and support constraints.