Draper wins NASA contract for farside lunar lander mission

WASHINGTON — NASA awarded a contract to Draper to send three science instruments to the far side of the moon through a commercial payload delivery program.

NASA announced July 21 it selected a team led by Draper for the 2025 mission to land in Schrödinger Basin, an impact basin about 320 kilometers across on the lunar farside near the south pole. The task order, awarded through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, is worth $73 million.

The lander, called SERIES-2 by Draper, will deliver to Schrödinger Basin three experiments to collect seismic data, measure the heat flow and electrical conductivity of the lunar subsurface and measure electromagnetic phenomena created by the interaction of the solar wind and plasma with the lunar surface.