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NASA’s CLPS Program Carries National Security Implications
Recent Lunar Landings Highlight Role of Commercial Companies in New Space Race
A single week in early March saw two commercial companies, Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace, land their respective spacecraft on the Moon’s surface to deliver scientific payloads on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The companies were contracted as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which aims to facilitate rapid acquisition of lunar delivery services that both enable scientific exploration and commercial development of the Moon. These sequential landings demonstrate not only the substantial progress made by commercial space companies since the program’s inception in 2018, but also highlight the role commercial partners will serve in a new “space race” that carries both civil and national security implications.
“We are in a new space race for natural resources, scientific knowledge and prestige,” said Lt Gen (Ret) Bill Liquori, Elara Nova partner and board member at Intuitive Machines. “Space has become central to our American way of war and our American way of life. This is evident in the National Space Strategy of 2018, which declared that unfettered access to and the freedom to operate in space was vital to advancing our national security, economic prosperity and scientific knowledge – all key elements of this new space race.”
The first space race, a key feature of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, led to significant national security, economic and scientific advancements. But in the decades since the Apollo program first placed American astronauts on the Moon, a commercial space industry has emerged as an alternative solution to returning astronauts to the lunar surface.
“There is a unique opportunity for NASA to leverage commercial services for the CLPS program: innovative space companies, decreasing launch costs, growing interest from space investors and a recognition of the critical role space plays in the American way of life,” Liquori said, who also serves on advisory boards with the Space Force Association and True Anomaly. “So rather than deliver payloads through a traditional government approach or procurement, which is often slower and more expensive, this new approach enables NASA to achieve rapid acquisition of lunar delivery services from commercial space companies. Now, NASA gets the benefit of a cheaper commercial approach, and the companies get the benefit of receiving NASA contracts.”
A Sequence of Lunar Landings
The CLPS program first made history in February 2024, when Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus spacecraft became the first commercial lander to reach the lunar surface. While Odysseus’ sideways landing left a few mission objectives unfulfilled, its landing marked the first American presence on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program over 50 years ago.
“Odysseus’ landing validated NASA’s decision to contract commercial space services and opened the door to what can be a thriving lunar economy,” Liquori said. “Odysseus not only landed farther south on the Moon than any other spacecraft in history, it also traveled over 600,000 miles and touched down within a mile of its intended target. The mission proved the commercial industry’s ability to transmit over 350 MB of scientific data from the Moon and the first deep space firing of a proprietary liquid methane / liquid oxygen engine. This achievement will be foundational to future Artemis missions that aim to return humans to the lunar surface.”
Earlier this year, the CLPS program made headlines again when two more commercial landers successfully reached the lunar surface: Intuitive Machine’s Athena and Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, respectively. While each spacecraft achieved their missions to varying degrees of success, their landings validate the innovative capabilities and accelerating timelines available in a maturing commercial space market.
“It’s important to understand that there were no commercial landers in development when Space Policy Directive One was signed back in 2017,” Liquori said, referring to a policy that re-focused NASA’s space exploration efforts to the Moon and beyond. “NASA approved the CLPS program a year later in 2018, and in less than five years we’ve got three commercial landings reaching the lunar surface. These achievements demonstrate the viability of NASA’s approach because commercial companies have proven they can move faster and cheaper than traditional government programs.”
Varying Degrees of Success
The CLPS program is currently designed to contract with 14 possible commercial space companies. To date, five of those companies have been awarded CLPS contracts. This approach affords NASA the flexibility to uniquely tailor the goals and objectives of each individual mission.
“Firefly’s Blue Ghost landed near a volcanic feature on the near side of the Moon and performed 14 days of surface operations,” Liquori said. “It transmitted hundreds of gigabytes of data on the Moon’s regolith and geophysical characteristics, as well as the interaction of solar winds with Earth’s magnetic field. Meanwhile, Intuitive Machine’s Athena landed near the south pole and focused on the search for chemical elements that might exist in the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions.”
While Athena, like Odysseus, experienced a compromised landing, Intuitive Machines was still able to prove basic instrument functions and collect half a gigabyte of data in 13 hours of lunar surface operations. But although some mission objectives remained incomplete, the lessons learned from both landings are being shared with government partners to better inform and prepare future efforts.
“The Intuitive Machines team is already in the midst of a comprehensive hot wash that is driving toward understanding the root cause of these issues and addressing other areas for improvement on future missions,” Liqouri said. “The hot wash also includes external participants like NASA, the European Space Agency and the Jet Propulsion Lab. This collaborative approach not only builds an individual company’s knowledge, but it also broadens the commercial industry’s collective knowledge which will enable greater success in subsequent missions.”
A Race for Lunar Resources
However, it’s not just American commercial companies that are making lunar landing attempts ahead of greater ambitions. Adversaries like Russia and China have made their own individual lunar attempts and have future, joint ambitions for human presence on the lunar surface.
“The Moon is a key piece of China’s overall space aspirations,” Liquori said. “In 2021, China announced plans for their International Lunar Research Station in a partnership with Russia, but they have also opened the program to other interested parties. The ILRS seeks to establish a robotic lunar base by the 2030s with an eventual human presence, as well.”
China hopes to involve as many as 50 other countries in its International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, with 10 countries having already signed on to participate. The ILRS stands in direct contrast to the United States’ Artemis program, which also seeks to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon.
However, the Artemis program will be conducted in accordance with the broader Artemis Accords – a multilateral framework that establishes a common set of principles for international cooperation in civil space exploration. As of mid-May, the Artemis Accords has been signed by 55 countries and reaffirms space-faring nation’s compliance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
The Artemis Accords stems from the wide-ranging recognition that collaboration and cooperation with international partners is a prerequisite to preserving a peaceful space domain.
“The United States can simply do more when international partners are involved, particularly through programs like the Artemis Accords and other multilateral forums,” Liquori said. “Inherent benefits include shared funding for technology development and academic research, as well as building an international consensus of like-minded partners that make it easier and oftentimes more effective to call out any irresponsible behavior from others in the space domain. No country can go it alone in space, and the right international partnerships often prove to be force multipliers.”
But to date, only one country has signed both the Artemis Accords and declared their intentions to participate in ILRS: Thailand. This calls into question what ulterior motives, if any, exist for the ILRS.
“Are China and Russia only interested in international scientific cooperation through ILRS, or are there some other goals that they might have for the Moon from a security perspective?” Liquori said. “China has already successfully completed robotic missions to the far side of the Moon and even returned lunar samples to Earth. Meanwhile, we currently don’t have an effective way to monitor activities on the far side of the Moon, so it’s important for us to pay attention to China’s progress and their lunar ambitions.”
National Security Implications of Civil Space Programs
That’s why the success of civil space programs, like CLPS, also carry national security implications for the United States Space Force.
“There is an opportunity for the Space Force and others to leverage the CLPS program to improve our space domain awareness capabilities in and around the Moon,” Liquori said. “China and Russia are equally interested in potential lunar resources, and human history has proven that resource competition often leads to security concerns and requirements. So programs like CLPS offers the Space Force an affordable opportunity to host a sensor, or a communications or navigation payload through commercial services, without the expense of a traditional large acquisition program in the face of China’s sustained, steady and oftentimes opaque space ambitions.”
Now, the new space race, like the previous Cold War-era space race before it, stands to benefit humanity beyond its national security implications.
“The first space race was driven in part by the need to see beyond the Iron Curtain and understand what the Soviet Union was doing. Since then, we have realized great military and economic benefits from our space activities: there are few military operations that don’t involve space capabilities, and space systems like the Global Positioning System help us navigate to different places and provide an accurate timing source for banking transactions across the global economy.”
A key, distinguishing factor for the new space race, however, is that success relies on the capabilities of the United States’ partners in the commercial space industry. But even commercial companies, like sovereign governments, require expertise to achieve their lunar ambitions.
“Companies and government organizations cannot grow this level of expertise overnight,” Liquori said. “The Elara Nova team is a great choice to help augment government or industry teams with expertise across all space mission areas: strategy and policy development, market engagement, technology and capital investment, mergers and acquisitions, legal and regulatory issues, as well as inter-agency and intergovernmental cooperation. The co-founders recognized the need to coalesce a wide-ranging set of space expertise and experience that any government or organization can benefit from.”
Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/.