GOLDEN, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Lunar Outpost named Castrol the lead Mission Control Center collaborator for its Lunar Voyage 1 mission. The Mission Control Center will be the primary center of operations and decision-making during Lunar Outpost’s Lunar Voyage 1 (LV1), slated to launch in late 2024.
Lunar Outpost’s LV1 mission will land at Shackleton Connecting Ridge near the lunar South Pole aboard Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander. The Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover will be the first to travel to this previously unexplored region of the Moon. The Mission Control Center will be the nexus of planning, decision-making, and control during the traverse. Control center operators will issue commands and monitor autonomous functions to guide the MAPP rover through its journey across a challenging environment with low sun angles, pitch-black shadows, and hazardous craters. The Mission Control Center will also play a critical role in monitoring and operating diverse commercial customer payloads onboard the rover.
"Our collaboration with Castrol reflects a shared vision for future lunar missions and commitment to push the limits of exploration," said Justin Cyrus, CEO at Lunar Outpost. "Castrol has worked with NASA since the first Apollo missions. Having the expertise of industry leaders with space heritage will not only support our commercial goals for Lunar Voyage 1 but will also help the space industry thrive.”
Castrol has over seven decades of experience supporting progress in the space industry with a rich heritage of working alongside innovative space companies like Lunar Outpost. This collaboration is a part of Castrol’s initiative, Castronomy™, which promotes advancements in space mobility through collaborations with today’s innovators. The goal of the collaboration between Lunar Outpost and Castrol is to maximize operational success, through an evolution of standard mission control.
"Castrol has been working with the space industry providing lubricants for critical mechanisms for over 60 years. Successful missions depend on the coming together of experts, pioneers and visionaries. At Castrol we call these space collaborations Castronomy™. We are thrilled to announce a new collaboration with Lunar Outpost, a truly visionary team pushing the limits of technological advancement and space exploration,” said Nicola Buck, Chief Marketing Officer, Castrol.
The Mission Control Center plays a vital role in achieving many notable firsts for humanity, including:
- The first rover at the lunar South Pole region
- The first commercial rover on another planetary body
- The first commercial sale of space resources in human history
- The first cellular network on another planetary body
About Lunar Outpost
Lunar Outpost is the industry leader in lunar surface mobility, commercial space robotics, and space resources. From our terrestrial product lines revolutionizing the air quality sector on Earth to the creation of oxygen on Mars, our impact spans the solar system. Lunar Outpost’s exploration class rover, the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), will be the first commercial rover on the Moon and the first rover in history to explore the lunar South Pole.
Since our founding in 2017, Lunar Outpost has raised Venture Capital from top-tier investors and continues to attract strong investment partners as we continue to prove the opportunity that advanced mobility, robotics and autonomy provide to the new space economy and here on Earth. In 2021, Lunar Outpost announced that our commercially funded MAPP rover was scheduled for delivery by an Intuitive Machines lander to the lunar South Pole. Lunar Outpost has since secured two additional contracted lunar surface missions, and leads the Lunar Dawn team, the leading consortium to create a true off-road vehicle for Artemis Astronauts living and working on the Moon’s surface. In addition to the missions above, Lunar Outpost has also won a contract with the Australian Space Agency to design and develop a lunar rover for Australia’s first mission to the Moon as part of the Trailblazer program.
With over a dozen active contracts across commercial, defense and civil space, Lunar Outpost is The Next Leap that will enable humanity to become interplanetary.
Find out more at lunaroutpost.com. Follow us on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
