Lockheed Martin drops out of commercial manned lunar rover consortium
Lunar Outpost, one of the three companies/partnerships that have won NASA contracts to develop manned lunar rovers for the Artemis program, has replaced Lockheed Martin as one of its partners.
This fact was only made evident now, three months after Lockheed parted ways, with a statement that a new much smaller company, Leidos, has joined the consortium.
That statement listed the other members of the Lunar Dawn team: General Motors, Goodyear and MDA Space. Notably absent was Lockheed Martin, which Lunar Outpost had described as its “principal partner” on the rover when it won the NASA contract in April. The website for Lunar Dawn also did not list Lockheed Martin as a partner.
In a Sept. 25 interview, Justin Cyrus, chief executive of Lunar Outpost, confirmed that Lockheed Martin was no longer involved in the rover project. “We just weren’t able to reach an agreement as we were negotiating the terms and conditions of the statement of work for this contract,” he said.
Both Lunar Outpost and Lockheed Martin provided no specific reasons for the break-up, other than typical PR statements such as “it wasn’t a good fit for us or them.”
The rover being built is dubbed Lunar Dawn. The present NASA contract only covers the design phase. Once completed NASA will choose one consortium to build the rover itself, picking from either the Lunar Outpost design or the designs submitted by Intuitive Machines and Venturi Astrolab.
Lunar Outpost, one of the three companies/partnerships that have won NASA contracts to develop manned lunar rovers for the Artemis program, has replaced Lockheed Martin as one of its partners.
This fact was only made evident now, three months after Lockheed parted ways, with a statement that a new much smaller company, Leidos, has joined the consortium.
That statement listed the other members of the Lunar Dawn team: General Motors, Goodyear and MDA Space. Notably absent was Lockheed Martin, which Lunar Outpost had described as its “principal partner” on the rover when it won the NASA contract in April. The website for Lunar Dawn also did not list Lockheed Martin as a partner.
In a Sept. 25 interview, Justin Cyrus, chief executive of Lunar Outpost, confirmed that Lockheed Martin was no longer involved in the rover project. “We just weren’t able to reach an agreement as we were negotiating the terms and conditions of the statement of work for this contract,” he said.
Both Lunar Outpost and Lockheed Martin provided no specific reasons for the break-up, other than typical PR statements such as “it wasn’t a good fit for us or them.”
The rover being built is dubbed Lunar Dawn. The present NASA contract only covers the design phase. Once completed NASA will choose one consortium to build the rover itself, picking from either the Lunar Outpost design or the designs submitted by Intuitive Machines and Venturi Astrolab.