NASA seeks information on commercial cargo service to Moon

Washington May 4 (IANS) In a possible push to advance space mining NASA is seeking information on commercial payload delivery services to the lunar surface media reported.

This week NASA issued a Request for Information (RfI) to the private industry for proposals related to cargo transportation to the lunar surface as well as a potential mission to collect lunar samples and deliver them back to Earth Inverse.com reported on Wednesday.

The exact purpose of such a request for information (RFI) like most of the agency s RFIs remains ambiguous the report said.

NASA has identified a variety of exploration science and technology demonstration objectives that could be addressed by sending instruments experiments or other payloads to the lunar surface the RFI reads.

To address these objectives as cost-effectively as possible NASA may procure payloads and related commercial payload delivery services to the Moon it said.

NASA said it is interested in assessing the availability of payload transit and delivery services from Earth to the lunar surface as early as fiscal year 2018 and through the next decade.

The RFI was issued to determine whether or not there are interested and available domestic vendor sources capable of meeting the identified requirements.

--IANS
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