User:Andrew Swallow/sandbox

Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to acquire transportation services to return to the Moon for small payloads including robots. CLPS intends to buy end-to-end payload services between the Earth and lunar surface using fixed price contracts.

The CLPS program is being operated by NASA Headquarters in-conjunction with the Science, Human Exploration and Operations and Science Technolgy Mission Directorates. NASA expects the contractors to provide all activities necessary to safely intergrate, accomodate, transport, and operate NASA Payloads using contractor provide assets, including launch vehicles, lunar lander spacecraft, lunar surface systems, Earth re-entry vehicles and associated resources.

In April 2018 NASA issued a Draft Request for Proposal (DRFP), Solicitation No. 80HQTR18R0011R, for Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). CLPS is starting with a full and open competition for a multiple-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to deliver scientific payloads to the Moon. The final solicitation is expected in the middle of July 2018.

History
NASA has been dreaming of returning to the Moon for many years. The Centennial Challenges issued by NASA had a vertical take-off vertical lander (VTVL) challenge called the Lunar Lander Challenge. This was won in 2009 by Masten Space Systems with Armadillo Aerospace coming second.

In July 2013 NASA started the Lunar CATALYST (Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown) initiative to to encourage the development of robotic lunar landers that can be integrated with United States commercial launch capabilities to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. There is a reasonable chance that at least one of the Lunar CATALYST companies will land on the Moon in 2019.

In April 2018 NASA issued a Draft Request for Proposal (DRFP), Solicitation No. 80HQTR18R0011R, for Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) see for text.

Missions
None.

A variety of exploration, science, and technology objectives that could be addressed by regularly sending instruments, experiments and other small payloads to the Moon have been identified by NASA.