NASA will pay a company $1 to collect moon rocks

NASA will be paying a low price – a dollar – to have a company make a small collection of moon dirt.

Colorado-based start-up Lunar Outpost won the bid for $1 to complete a mission under the agency’s low-cost lunar resource collection program announced earlier this year.

Lunar Outpost is one of the three companies that NASA selected as winning bidders. The California-based Masten Space Systems, which proposed a $15,000 mission in 2023, and Tokyo-based ispace, which proposed $5,000 missions in 2022 and 2023 are the other two winners.

The companies will collect the samples and then provide us with visual evidence and other data that they’ve been collected, and then ownership will transfer and we will then collect those samples.

The agency asked for bids in the range of $15,000 to $25,000 each, with a maximum limit of $250,000. The awards for the three companies will be paid in a three-step process: 10% of the funds at the time of the award, 10% when the company launches their collection spacecraft, and 80% when NASAA verifies the company collected the material.

NASA is going to cut a check for 10 cents [to Lunar Outpost]. NASA commercial spaceflight director Phil McAlister said.