DARPA moon train heralds heated race for lunar supremacy

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Northrop Grumman plan to build a lunar railway system, setting the stage for a new era of space military operations, exploration and economy.

This month, Defense News reported that DARPA and the US defense contractor are collaborating to create a moon-based railway system to facilitate the transportation of humans, resources and supplies for commercial purposes and promote a space economy for the US and its international partners.

Defense News notes that Northrop Grumman’s work will focus on identifying the interfaces, resources and funding needed to build such a network as well as the technological and logistical risks. The report says the private company will also propose lunar rail system prototypes to explore how the capability could be built and operated.

The effort is part of DARPA’s Lunar Architecture Capability Study (LunA-10), which aims to identify the foundational technologies needed to develop future infrastructure on the moon.

Last December, Northrop Grumman was one of 14 companies DARPA selected to explore concepts to support a future lunar economy by 2035. The studies come as the US, its international partners and commercial firms envision future activity around the moon.

Defense News says that the US Space Force’s interest in the military utility of operations around the moon is also growing, with plans to create a Space Futures Command to validate forward-looking concepts and emerging missions.

The source states that the Space Futures Command’s cislunar work will focus on understanding whether operations in that environment offer military benefits to the service.

In a March 2022 Politico article, Bryan Bender mentions several potential strategic uses of the moon, including domain awareness, lunar outposts, cislunar space protection and resources. A lunar train may be instrumental in actualizing projects to achieve those goals, the report said.

The moon could also serve as a base for deploying weapons and spacecraft without being easily detected by conventional space tracking methods. These purposes could include the deployment of weapons designed to track and destroy satellites and spacecraft in orbit.

Along those lines, Bender says the US Space Force aims to develop technologies for enhanced sensing capabilities to understand and monitor activities beyond Earth’s orbit.

In November 2022, the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) awarded Advanced Space LLC a US$72 million contract to demonstrate space situational awareness, detect objects and track them near the moon as part of the Oracle spacecraft program.

The project aims to develop new tech to identify objects that were not previously recognized, detect small or faraway objects, and study spacecraft positioning and navigation in space beyond the geosynchronous orbit up to the moon. This area is known as XGEO, which is ten times farther than the usual operational range of the US Space Force and US Space Command.

The US Space Surveillance Network currently uses a combination of sensors located on Earth and in typical orbits, such as GEO. On the other hand, Oracle’s operation will be situated near the Earth-moon Lagrange Point 1, covering a distance of approximately 320,000 kilometers.

Further, the US Air Force reported in December 2023 that the Oracle project consists of two systems, Oracle-M and Oracle-P. Oracle-M is a near-term, low-cost deep space mobility pathfinder to be delivered in mid-2024; Oracle-P is a purpose-built cislunar space situational awareness (SSA) experiment, demonstrating the ability to search for unknown or lost objects and maintain custody of known objects. Delivery is expected in 2026 and a launch is planned for 2027.

Bender points out that the moon can serve as a space outpost, showing the strategic value of holding lunar territory for economic and military purposes.

In January 2022, Asia Times reported that China and Russia have decided to establish a joint moon base earlier than planned, with an expected completion date of 2027. The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) will consist of different scientific facilities that allow for research experiments, moon exploration, technology verification and observation from the moon.

However, the 2027 date appears to have been delayed. China plans to launch the Chang’e 8 lunar exploration mission in 2028 as the first step in establishing the ILRS, testing technology for using local resources and manufacturing with 3D printing.

Furthermore, Forbes reported this month that China and Russia are considering a joint nuclear power plant on the moon’s surface within the next decade, according to Yuri Borisov, general director of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.

The Forbes report notes that the project, intended for lunar settlements, is expected to be completed between 2033 and 2035. The plant’s construction will likely be automated, as it must be done without human presence. It also says that nuclear energy is required since modern solar panels won’t provide enough electricity.

Forbes also states that NASA and the US Department of Energy are also developing plans to establish a nuclear power plant on the moon in the early 2030s. Bender points out the moon’s economic potential, citing DARPA’s NOM4D project, which explores in-space manufacturing using materials launched from Earth.

The moon is believed to have valuable resources such as silicon, rare earth metals, titanium, aluminum, water, precious metals and Helium-3. The technologies developed for a long-term lunar presence may have potential commercial applications in the future.

In January 2023, NASA proposed its Lunar South Pole Oxygen Pipeline (L-SPoP), a gaseous oxygen pipeline that would be situated at the moon’s South Pole. The pipeline will revolutionize lunar surface operations for the US Artemis program and reduce costs and risks by utilizing on-site resources.

The starting concept is a 5-kilometer pipeline transporting oxygen gas from an oxygen production source to an oxygen storage/liquefication plant near a lunar base.

This month, IEEE Spectrum reported that a US space startup called Interlune announced plans to mine lunar regolith for Helium-3. Regolith is a layer of loose, varied and unconsolidated surface deposits covering solid bedrock.

IEEE Spectrum notes that Helium-3 is a strategic resource that is used in neutron detectors to detect smuggled nuclear material, a cryogenic coolant for quantum computing, a less-radioactive material for medical imaging, and, in the future, a possible fuel for fusion nuclear reactors.

Interlune envisions lunar Helium-3 extraction using seven-meter-long solar-powered robotic vehicles to scoop up regolith and separate out the Helium-3. The vehicles would then carry the Helium-3 gas to a waiting spacecraft that would ferry it back to Earth with a useful load in the tens of kilograms.