Today, Australia’s Minister for Industry and Science and dignitaries from the Australian Space Agency and NASA announced the selection of the Lunar Outpost Oceania Consortium as one of two successful groups to receive Stage 1 grant funding from the Australian Government’s Moon to Mars Trailblazer Initiative to design critical autonomous lunar mobility and excavation solutions. The Lunar Outpost Oceania Consortium is composed of lead organizations EPE, BHP, Northrop Grumman Australia, RMIT University’s Space Industry Hub, and University of Melbourne’s Space Laboratory. University of Adelaide, Inovor, Australian National University, Element Robotics, Colorado School of Mines and Saber Astronautics will provide specialist contributions, and Australian Industry Collaborators include Titomic, One Giant Leap, VIPAC and CD3D. The Consortium aims to be selected for Stage 2 of the Initiative to build and launch a rover capable of collecting lunar regolith for delivery to a NASA science in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) facility on the Moon.
