DARPA Selects 14 Companies for LunA-10 Capability Study

Ibadan, 7 December 2023. – The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected 14 companies for the 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study. The study aims to catalyze the setup of a future civil lunar framework for peaceful U.S. and international use. Furthermore, LunA-10 seeks to study the rapid development of technology concepts for a series of shareable, scalable systems that can operate jointly, creating monetizable services for future lunar users.

According to the Agency, the next decade may give rise to a thriving lunar economy and getting there requires looking beyond the current technical paradigm of isolated, self-sufficient systems that must organically support all necessary resources. The resources include power and communications and will go towards a future framework that emphasizes integrated models of commercial activity.

LunA-10 program performers will work together over the course of the seven-month study in a highly collaborative environment, where they will design new integrated system-level solutions that span multiple lunar services. These include lunar power; mining and commercial in-situ resource utilization; communications, navigation, and timing; transit, mobility, and logistics; and construction and robotics.

Speaking on the study, Dr. Michael Nayak, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said, “LunA-10 has the potential to upend how the civil space community thinks about spurring widespread commercial activity on and around the Moon within the next 10 years”.

The manager also added that, “LunA-10 performers include companies both big and small, domestic and international, each of which brought a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure. We’re excited to get started and to share results with the lunar community at large.”