Amelia has been selected to attend DARPA's LunA-10 "Enablers" Workshop on February 22, 2024.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) 10-year Lunar Architecture Capability Enablers Study aims to catalyze the establishment of a future civil lunar framework for peaceful U.S. and international use. This Enablers Workshop is intended to brief a select group of companies on opportunities and requirements to participate in DARPA's 10-year Lunar Architecture Capability Enablers Study.
Known for its history of pioneering technologies like the Internet and GPS, DARPA has already selected 14 organizations as part of the program that seeks to study the rapid development of technology concepts for a series of shareable, scalable systems that can operate jointly for a future lunar economy. These companies, termed "Performers" by DARPA, include Blue Origin, CisLunar Industries, Crescent Space Services LLC, Fibertek, Inc. Firefly Aerospace, GITAI, Helios, Honeybee Robotics, ICON, Nokia of America, Northrop Grumman, Redwire Corporation, Sierra Space, and SpaceX. ICON, for example, has been awarded $57.2 million for the development of roads on the Moon, and Blue Origin has been awarded $3.4 billion to build the next lunar lander.
Amelia will focus on specific LunA-10 challenges as DARPA seeks to procure enabling expertise for designing the lunar infrastructure.
According to Dr. Michael "Orbit" Nyak, program manager in DARPA's Strategic Technology Office, "LunA-10 has the potential to upend how the civil space community thinks about spurring widespread commercial activity on and around the Moon within the next 10 years. LunA-10 performers who have been selected for the study include companies both big and small, domestic and international, each of which brought a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure."
Amelia views that the challenges of lunar development, such as extreme temperatures, radiation exposure, micrometeoroids, resource limitations, and the need for psychological resilience, also create exciting opportunities for ongoing ingenuity and breakthroughs.
Furthermore, this opportunity represents an evolution from today's space exploration paradigm, where each space mission must be self-sufficient. LunA-10 establishes the groundwork for broad collaboration on shared infrastructure.
Amelia envisions solutions that can technologically facilitate a sustainable human presence on the Moon and, at the same time, promote societal cooperation for humanity's peaceful expansion into the Solar System.