NASA wants to pay someone to collect rocks on the Moon as a lunar commerce proof of concept

Sending the first woman and next man to the Moon isn’t the only lunar goal NASA has for 2024. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced today that the space agency is seeking a commercial company capable of collecting moon rocks for NASA to purchase.

The interesting twist is that the company or companies awarded contracts won’t be required to bring the Moon rocks back to Earth. The objective is simply to demonstrate commerce on the Moon as a concept toward building a sustainable presence on the lunar surface and beyond.

Today, we’re taking a critical step forward by releasing a solicitation for commercial companies to provide proposals for the collection of space resources. […]

The requirements we’ve outlined are that a company will collect a small amount of Moon “dirt” or rocks from any location on the lunar surface, provide imagery to NASA of the collection and the collected material, along with data that identifies the collection location, and conduct an “in-place” transfer of ownership of the lunar regolith or rocks to NASA. After ownership transfer, the collected material becomes the sole property of NASA for our use.

NASA’s goal is that the retrieval and transfer of ownership will be completed before 2024.

Rock on, moon rock seekers.🤘The agency is specifically requesting between 50g to 500g of “Lunar regolith and/or rock materials” per its contract request. The award is valued from $15,000 to $25,000.