NASA has awarded funds to Austin, Texas-based ICON, to develop construction technologies that could help build landing pads, habitats, and roads on the Moon using local lunar resources.
"There is also the international pressure to do this," Abbud-Madrid told Space.com,"and that's going to keep the program pushing forward. It's the competition, that's the reality." "Let's go and interact with it. I think that's going to be key for anything you want to do, be it for extraction, construction, collection, you name it," Abbud-Madrid said.
At the June 6-9 gathering here an ISRU"Envisioned Future Priorities" was detailed by Gerald Sanders, lead for NASA's In-Space Resource Utilization, Capability Leadership Team at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Intuitive Machines is a major player within NASA’s CLPS initiative to plop down payloads on the moon’s terrain by way of the group’s Nova-C lander. The craft’s maiden voyage to the lunar south pole is targeted for liftoff by year’s end.