Astrolab’s FLIP rover is shown at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. FLIP will carry payloads from four NASA centers to the Moon’s south pole aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The mission is slated for launch in late 2026. Credit: Astrolab
WASHINGTON — Astrolab’s first lunar rover will carry four NASA payloads on a mission planned to launch later this year.
Astrolab announced May 18 that it had reached agreements with four NASA centers to fly payloads on its FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform, or FLIP, rover scheduled to launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander late this year.
NASA’s Ames Research Center is providing the Moon Exploration for Titanium with Active Lighting, or METAL, a camera and radiometer designed to identify helium-3 deposits in lunar regolith. METAL is being developed in partnership with Interlune, a company that previously announced plans to fly a helium-3 prospecting payload on FLIP.
The other payloads are a lunar retroreflector array from the Goddard Space Flight Center; the Lunar Dust level sensor and Effects on Surfaces, or LDES, payload from the Johnson Space Center to study dust-induced degradation of key spacecraft systems; and a lidar demonstration payload from the Marshall Space Flight Center.
