HUERFANO COUNTY — In a lonely part of southern Colorado between Rye and Walsenburg, the most off-road-looking, off-road vehicle maneuvers past craters, rolls over dirt mounds and kicks up a little dust as it drives in a location so obscure that even Google Maps has trouble finding it.
But there it was and similar to an early artist rendering: the Lunar Outpost Eagle. Or at least it was a prototype of the autonomous lunar terrain vehicle that may be on the moon by the end of the decade for astronauts to scoot around up there.
Two iterations of the solar-powered Eagle roamed the family ranch of Lunar Outpost founder Justin Cyrus, who invited TV cameras, journalists and other media to take a peek last week at what the Golden-based space company has been up to for the past few years.
Normally, few humans are wandering around the property. The cattle were moved out of sight. Cyrus warned that other wildlife could wander into the path. “Watch out for rattlesnakes,” he told the humans. “If you hear a rattle, make sure you stop, evaluate the situation and then go the other way.”
Lunar Outpost’s latest iteration of its Eagle Lunar Terrain Vehicle is being tested in Southern Colorado, near Rye. The Golden-based company’s rover is competing for a service contract for NASA’s Artemis mission to provide transport for moon exploration. On the left is the latest model, nicknamed Falcon. In the video, an earlier prototype called Raven, was offering rides. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)
If all goes Lunar Outpost’s way, NASA will award the Lunar Dawn team — which includes partners Goodyear, GM, MDA Space and Leidos — a service contract for the lunar terrain vehicle, or LTV.
But there’s competition. NASA narrowed it down to three LTV finalists in April 2024 for the Artemis Program, the U.S. mission to get humans back on the moon. A winner could be announced by the end of the year.
The other two finalists are Venturi Astrolab in the Los Angeles area, and Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which last year sent America’s first spacecraft back to the moon since the Apollo program in 1972. Intuitive Machines also carried Lunar Outpost’s first rover called MAPP — short for mobile autonomous prospecting platform — to the moon’s South Pole in March. The lander landed on its side and in a crater causing MAPP to get stuck. It couldn’t recharge. But it arrived in working order.
All three companies are part of a new effort to open space up to commercial companies.
“The goal of Lunar Outpost is to help create a sustainable human presence in space,” said Michael Moreno, the company’s vice president of strategy. “It’s not enough to launch a rocket. It’s not enough to land in one place with a lander and sit there. We need to be mobile to expand humankind’s reach into space.
“If we want to build a habitation, you can’t put it right next to a rocket landing site. You need miles. I mean, think about Kennedy Space Center. You’re not sitting right next to the launch pad. Mobility is the key to unlocking a sustainable human presence in space, which is why we focused on that.”
How Eagle’s training ground landed south of Rye
Cyrus cofounded Lunar Outpost with his older brother, Julian, and AJ Gemer and Forest Meyen. Younger brother Austin also works for the company.
The Cyrus brothers have a history with outer space. They grew up outside of Johnson Space Center in Houston, where their father worked for NASA.
Many of Lunar Outpost’s crew have ties to Colorado School of Mines or University of Colorado in Boulder, both of which are recognized for their curriculum and contributions to aerospace. Justin went to both schools, and has an CU engineering degree and ended at Mines with a Masters of Science.
“We go way back,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, a professor and director of the Center for Space Resources at Mines. “He and his brother, Austin, went through our space resources graduate program and we’ve been working with them closely.”
Many space companies work with Mines. The school recently opened a test facility with simulated regolith to mimic the ground layer found on the moon. The manufactured moon dust is made from basaltic volcanic material and ground to the right consistency. Carcinogenic material is removed but anyone who steps in the room needs a special mask since the dust can get into lungs. In the 100-square-meter facility, a lighting system also replicates conditions on the moon.
“It’s open to organizations like NASA or companies like Lunar Outpost, and other universities — anyone who wants to use this for rovers, excavators, drilling machines or any robotic manipulators or equipment,” Abbud-Madrid said. “You can even take your rover there and control it from anywhere in the world or space if you want so you can replicate how you’re going to be controlling such a vehicle from Earth. It even produces a delay in the signal.”
Lunar Outpost, which employs about 150 people, has its mission-control operations in Arvada, where employees can check in on the rover wherever it is.
But they needed a much more expansive, remote area where the rover could drive around with humans safely on the sidelines or in the vehicle and operate unnoticed by the public. The rovers operate autonomously, by manual control or are controlled remotely from Arvada.
The family ranch in a remote part of Colorado seemed like a good solution so they started using it for the first mission about two years ago.
“The Colorado School of Mines is a much better facility for geo-technically accurate regolith, for accurate lunar soil. But it’s fairly small in the grand scheme of things. You don’t get these massive landscapes. What we wanted to do is put our operators in mission control and train them like they’re on the surface of the moon — remotely and not have anyone touch the robot,” Cyrus said. “I just had to convince my parents to let me tear up the front of the ranch.”
On the ranch property, there’s an area to mimic the moon’s surface, with homemade craters, small hills and stacks of jagged shale rocks. On the back part of the property, there’s lots of space for a rover to roam.
“Over there you’ll notice some pretty massive ravines,” said Cyrus, after taking spectators to an area that overlooked a valley bordered by cliffs and dotted with dull grasses and shrubs and lots of pale Colorado dirt. “You have a lot of very extreme features on the surface of the moon. You have giant craters. You have lunar lava tubes. You have massive boulder fields. This area in the back allows us to test a lot of those key features.”
They also test the rover’s operation up and down slopes of up to 20-degrees, a NASA requirement. Long slopes are a challenge for electric vehicles because of battery use.
“We have to make sure the power management on these vehicles is very efficient as we’re going over these extreme environments,” he said. “Here, we’ll put a robot out autonomously and operate it for a week or two weeks at a time.”
It happened to hit 90°F that day, a more palatable temperature than the extremes on the moon of 250°F in daylight to -208°F at night, according to NASA.
The rovers have broken “dozens of times,” he said. “The good news, though, it’s never driven into a ravine. It’s never hit a giant rock. It’s never been totaled. The rover is doing very well.”
And you’ll know you’re at the right place if you spot a metal sign that says, “Lunar Vehicle Test Site.”
That’s the handiwork of Bill Mansfield, an owner of the Greenhorn Valley Ace Hardware in nearby Colorado City. He’d worked on other signage for the brothers’ father, who shares bits and pieces about the project whenever he stops by. A former Ace employee worked for the brothers, so there’s another local link. But no one in town is really buzzing about it because they probably don’t know.
“It’s kind of out there where nobody really is and I think that’s probably part of the reason why they picked that spot,” said Mansfield, who’s seen the LTV but not in action. “It’s really cool, especially if they can get it accomplished. It’s a neat project.”
Behind the design
One of the most noticeable adaptations for testing on Earth are the vehicle’s tires. They’re regular rubber Goodyear Wrangler tires built for backroads terrain.
On the moon, however, the rover will be fitted with something entirely different — metal tires that look like wire strands woven together, akin to a Medieval knight’s chain mail. That’s to prevent a broken piece from ruining the whole tire.
“They’re very low maintenance. These tires can last over 10 years on the lunar surface at a time without any maintenance,” Cyrus said.
The proprietary metal tires, made by Lunar Dawn teammate, Goodyear, provide traction but also absorb impact. Cyrus showed how the metal tire bounced on the ground.
The latest Eagle prototype, called Falcon, seats two astronauts and has a large bed to transport whatever space items are needed — up to about 5,300 pounds. Many features on the vehicle were designed with humans in mind, from adding fenders to mitigate dust, ledges on the sides to provide work surfaces, and inlay lighting on the floors and exterior to help astronauts instantly know where they are around the vehicle.
The seats have deep gaps in the back to handle astronauts’ oxygen tanks. Giant handles to steer the vehicle accommodate the pressurized gloves astronauts wear. A rack of useful metal tools, like a shovel, work light and sledgehammer are attached using a quick-connect system on a gridded panel inspired by their own off-road adventures using MOLLE panels.
There’s 360-degree cameras, multiple sensors and lidar to determine depth. Dual-sided solar panels for the roof slide to the sides as needed or can be deployed elsewhere.
“One thing we’ve learned from all the mission operations of our early rovers is power is key,” Cyrus said. “You want to be able to drive as far as possible, stop, charge and download data, especially on the early missions where we’re limited to only 14 Earth days. Landers don’t survive alone at night so we have to get as much data down as possible.”
Missing at least on this day was the meter-long robotic arm from MDA Space, which will help astronauts grab resources. The arm can also do it with zero human interaction “so it can accomplish a lot of science,” Cyrus said. Named SKYMAKER, the robotic arm was in Houston for additional testing.
The vehicle is pretty large. It looks like it ate two or three Jeep Wranglers. Cyrus declined to say how much it weighed but they’re trying to keep it as light as possible. When it heads to the moon, it’ll ship nearly as is.
“It doesn’t fold at all,” Cyrus said. “The suspension is slightly compressed but that’s it. … Honestly, I’m just excited to be in the 2020s and having transportation that can fit something like this is awesome. … Yes, a SpaceX starship fits this.”
And if NASA picks the Eagle, the rover is scheduled to be on the moon in 2029.
Commercializing outer space
The world has gotten used to commercial companies like SpaceX sending reusable rockets to space. Commercialization has been in the works for years. In 2020, the U.S. was part of the Artemis Accords, essentially an outer space treaty with more than 50 countries committed to a “safe, peaceful and prosperous future in space.”
For Lunar Outpost, it’s already been to the moon. Its MAPP rover mission, the first commercial rover on the moon, carried goodies, aka payloads, including Adidas soccer jerseys for an Italian football club Juventus, Nokia’s cellular network in a box, and a laser-engraved key to unlocking a cryptocurrency stash.
More missions are planned.
For the LTV mission, NASA’s paying for the service. It’s not buying the vehicle. According to NASA, the contract has a “maximum potential value of $4.6 billion.”
If the Lunar Dawn team isn’t picked, there’s still a chance the Eagle will one day land on the moon. It just needs to find another customer.
“We are building this vehicle to exceed NASA standards,” Moreno said. “We continue to own the vehicles and they buy missions from us. It’s very intentional. It’s a new business model for NASA. They want to collaborate with commercial space and to do that, we need to be commercially viable without NASA as well.”
The interest in commercialization has also helped Colorado and aspiring space workers. Lunar Outpost officials estimate that about one-third of its local employees are from area schools like School of Mines.
“It’s a big deal for the company. It’s a big deal for Mines. It’s a big deal for Colorado because Colorado has become the hub of all of these companies that are looking to have access to the moon for commercial purposes,” Abbud-Madrid said. “And if the LTV is awarded (to Lunar Outpost), that opens up all sorts of possibilities to whoever wants to use this vehicle, and NASA may want to use it.”
Earlier this month, toymaker Lego began selling its Technic Lunar Outpost Moon Rover Space Vehicle, which includes the MAPP rover. The Adidas Lunar Outpost jersey collection appears to be sold out.
“Other commercial customers have come out afterwards asking, hey, can we put this on the moon? Or can we do this with you? Everyone has a different angle they’re interested in,” Moreno said. “Now that we have demonstrated this, not only are we going back to the moon, but we are back. So now what? Let’s get creative.”
