NASA announced on January 23rd the selection of nine companies for contracts with a combined value of $24 million to study logistics needed for later human missions on the Moon, when the agency anticipates larger crews spending more time on the lunar surface. Among the winners was Special Aerospace Services, which teamed up with Prof. George Sowers from Mines’ Center for Space Resources on a broad study of logistical carriers, logistics handling and offloading, logistics transfer, staging, storage, and tracking, as well as trash management, surface cargo and mobility, and integrated strategies. NASA made the awards using its Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-2 (NextSTEP-2) broad agency announcement, a contract vehicle used for a wide range of efforts, ranging from the Human Landing System crewed landers for Artemis to support for commercial space stations.
