New Delhi: OrbitBeyond, one of three companies chosen by NASA to carry payloads to the Moon, has notified the agency that it will be unable to carry out the task due to “internal corporate challenges” and has sought to have its nearly $100 million contract terminated, according to Space News.
OrbitBeyond first made headlines in India in June when it hired Bengaluru-based private aerospace firm TeamIndus to design and engineer the first US lunar lander in the 21st century.
However, on July 29, NASA announced that OrbitBeyond would not be able to complete the task order awarded to it on May 31 as a part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. NASA has also agreed to release the company from its contract.
Previously, after NASA had awarded contracts to Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and OrbitBeyond to carry up to 23 payloads to the Moon on three commercial lunar lander missions, Siba Padhi, chief executive of OrbitBeyond, had said that the company was “in the process of closing funding”.
As a part of NASA’s initiative to outsource production of space vehicles, the agency had decided to spend over $250 million for hiring private companies to fund privately-operated missions to gather data about the lunar surface.
Also read: Chandrayaan 2 Is in Orbit. Here’s What Will Happen Next.
Of the three companies picked by NASA for the task, OrbitBeyond, a consortium of nine firms including TeamIndus, had the earliest target date for its mission in September 2020.
TeamIndus engineer Ananth Rames had confirmed the development and told Times of India, “Yes, we will be building the lander. It is most likely to be built in India too.”
A spokesperson for OrbitBeyond told Quartz that they chose TeamIndus’ design “because it is the most advanced. This will allow Orbit Beyond to meet NASA’s launch schedule and grow the US industrial base for space vehicles.”
However, according to Space News, OrbitBeyond attracted unfavourable attention after American politicians began to comment on the fact that an American instrument wouldn’t be built in the country, but in India. Excerpt from Space News’s report:
“While this partnership appears to comply with NASA’s solicitation, the optics, obviously, are not good,” Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said during a June 11 hearing of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, responded that the agency would do a “full review” of all companies that received CLPS awards to ensure they complied with a contract provision that requires the landers to be built in the United States.
TeamIndus was founded around 2011 to participate in the $30 million global lunar landing and roving competition Google Lunar XPrize. The prize lapsed in January 2018 when the contenders were found to be unprepared for the deadline.
Previously in 2018, Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of the Indian Space and Research Organisation, terminated its launch services agreement with TeamIndus. Team Indus was planning to land a spacecraft and rover on the moon, but could not mobilise funds to hire a rocket.