NASA wants a piece of Moon; asks contractors to retrieve Lunar Regolith above 50gm

America's space agency NASA is seemingly eager to have a piece of the Moon to itself. It has issued an unprecedented solicitation titled “Purchase of Lunar Regolith and/or Rock Materials from Contractor”. 

The space agency has asked contractors to bid on an effort to retrieve between 50g and 500g of lunar regolith or moon dust and bring it back to Earth before 2024.

The contractor needs to collect the said amount of moon particles from the lunar surface without any help from NASA in the development, production, or launch of space vehicles required to travel to Moon to get the moon particles. 

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'regolith types, rocks, ices'

The amount of material retrieved does not affect the overall price of the contract. However, NASA has clarified that the contract will be awarded on the basis of being “low price, technically acceptable”, which means the procurement by NASA is a "free and open competition" for the contractors and anybody is free to retrieve the lunar regolith, all NASA would do is buy it from them. Contractor shall describe how the retrieval of the lunar material would be performed in their proposal response to NASA.

The contractor shall provide imagery to NASA of the collection and the Collected Material, and data that identifies the collection location on the Lunar surface and after the ownership of the collected Lunar material is transferred to NASA, the space agency is free to do anything with it, the Request for Quotation (RFQ) by NASA said.

The collected materials may be any combination of regolith types, rocks, or co-present species such as ices. NASA reserves the right to independently confirm the Contractor’s claim of collecting the Collected Materials. If NASA does choose to do so, then NASA will determine and use such independent verification methods that will not interfere with the Contractor’s activities, NASA's RFQ mentioned. The payment terms are set at a ratio of 10:10:80 ratio. 

An ombudsman has been appointed to hear and facilitate the resolution of concerns from offerors, potential offerors, and contractors during the pre-award and post-award phases of this acquisition. When requested, the ombudsman will maintain strict confidentiality as to the source of the concern, NASA's RFQ read.

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