Justin Cyrus, CEO of space tech firm Lunar Outpost, joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's planned moon missions and how it plans to bring intra-lunar communication to the moon — and more. "We're heading towards a future where there's a sustainable presence not only on the moon but on Mars and beyond, and that's going to be enabled by companies like ours that are providing the robotic systems that are providing the infrastructure to make that sustainability possible," he said.

Opening Bell

Lunar Outpost on the Next Private Moon Rover — and Beyond

joining us now is Justin, Cyrus Ceo of lunar outpost. Thank you so much for joining us Justin I want to start by getting your view of the space economy as a whole. So where do you think we're going and how promising does it look for you where we stand right now? Yeah, thanks for having me, Shannon. Uh, really excited to be here, I think to look at where we're going in the space economy, we kind of need to take a step back and look at where we're at today. We have thousands of satellites in Earth orbit providing communications, providing GPS, providing remote imaging. That's pretty fundamental to the way our economies operate here on earth now. All that being said as the cost of launch goes down and we see these heavy launch vehicles come online like sls like starship, like Blue Origins, new glen that really starts enabling new business cases further out into space. So we're heading towards a future where there's a sustainable presence not only on the moon but on mars and beyond and that's going to be enabled by companies like ours that are providing the robotic systems that are providing the infrastructure to make that sustainability possible. And just to reflect a little bit about where we're at on the space economy today, it's a truly unique point. We've never had public private partnerships that have been this strong, we've never had the commercial opportunities that are available today and we've never had the backing of the venture community, the investment community as we do today as well, so certainly, you know, and I think the phantom space ceo was talking about it a little bit the next decade is going to be extremely exciting. Not only on the winter surface but other key points in space as well. And we're really looking forward to being a part of it. I was saying it sounds like you already are a part of it because you guys have a big mission coming up next year. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah so our first mission is headed to the lunar south pole. So what's pretty unique about the lunar south pole environment? It's actually where Artemis astronauts are going to be heading in 2025 2026. So think of these rover missions as scouting missions, exploration missions. So we know what the terrain looks like. We know what the temperatures the radiation environment looks like. Um And it's going to be critically important to collect that data early now this first mission is launching on a SpaceX falcon nine rocket landing on an intuitive machines, Nova C. Lander. And this is gonna be the first rover at this location in human history. So we're gonna be collecting data and going places where no one has ever been before. Now. One of the most exciting things about this mission is that it's fully commercial. So Nasa does have a payload on board with us and we're actually gonna be collecting and selling the first space resource to Nasa as a part of this mission but it is fully commercial. So we have partners like Nokia M. I. T. The italian space agency and others that are going to be riding along with us on mission one. Wow that is so cool. So how will your partnership with Nokia advance the future for human spaceflight? Yeah Shannon. I love that question. I think it's perfectly placed. So Nokia is providing inter lunar surface communication and just real quick. What that means is high bandwidth communication on the lunar surface and what that allows is hundreds of devices whether it's astronauts that our lives streaming face timing back here to earth are its swarms of robotic systems that are communicating with each other and also communicating with ground station or operations in sis lunar space. So that high bandwidth communication is critical for advanced technologies to be able to build out infrastructure as we move forward. Now this first mission just to give a clearer picture of what we're doing. We're actually deploying to Nokia antennas on our first rover which we're quite excited about. They'll be relaying information data real time data. We're collecting back to our intuitive machines, lander which will be beaming them to ground stations all across the globe here on earth and we can get that data from the moon all the way back here to Earth in less than seven seconds. So still a little bit of like a little bit of delay but significantly better than what communication uh communications are in place now at much higher bandwidths seven seconds. That's not bad at all considering it's coming from out of space, but but you're not going to start there. You're then partnering with Nasa on the next mission set for 2024. So what do you have in store for that one? Yeah. Mission number two is pretty exciting as well. Uh Really our job along with johns Hopkins Applied Physics laboratory is to go explore Reiner Gamma. So Reiner Gamma is a magnetic anomaly on the lunar surface that has puzzled scientists for hundreds of years. Uh So no one really knows why it's there, why it formed. Um And so we're taking a magnetometer, a microscope and a few other science instruments to figure out exactly why that magnetic anomaly is on the lunar surface. And that's gonna tell us more about how the lunar surface was formed, how the earth was formed and how our solar system was formed. Which is really gonna push forward our understanding of planetary science, which we're quite excited about uh launch and landing is the same load out for us on that one. So, SpaceX falcon nine into the machine's nova. See just a very different location on the winter surface and that's something I do want to highlight. A lot of people think of the moon as oh hey, it's it's kind of just all the same right. You know, it's just all gray rock and dust, but in reality it's a very day dynamic environment. So when you're looking at one of these equatorial regions verse of lunar south Pole mission, it's a very extremely different environment. Not only from your temperature profile but the resources, the materials that are actually there, whether it's water, whether it's titanium, your platinum group, metals, your palladium, your iron, all of that differs depending on what spot you're on on the winter surface. Now, you know, I'm looking at this rover on the screen, I thought it was a big like like truck or tanker. And then I see the guy bringing in, I'm like, oh that thing is small. So are you just releasing one of them multiple? And you know, and are there plans for larger ones as well? Yeah, it's an excellent question. So certainly early on in our design profile, we're constrained by how much mass we can put on the winter surface. But what's exciting is with these early rovers, we've Made them a lot smaller but they're just as capable if not more capable than a lot of the historic rovers. So these are around 10 kg class size of a small dog, but we do have multiple other rovers as well that are larger and more capable. But the idea behind these rovers on the winter surface is not that we're just gonna have one of them, not just have two of them, but hundreds of these robots operating simultaneously in swarms to build out infrastructure. So your habitat, your roads, launch and landing pads, communication power. And once we are able to do that, then we want to utilize that infrastructure. We're building to access the resources that are available on the moon, further out in space for the betterment of humanity. So with all of this that you're doing and all the partnership that you have, I mean, what's next? I mean, and how do you measure your success? Because it seems like you guys are doing it all. So what's next after these missions? Much appreciated? It's it's definitely an exciting time to be in space. We're very fortunate to have the partners and the opportunities we do, um, there's a lot of work left to be done first and foremost, we need to prove that it's possible for a small commercial company like ours to operate a robot on another planet's everybody. We have already found ways to utilize that technology that we're building for space here on Earth and you know, certainly have to talk more about that. But once we prove that we can operate these robotic systems on the moon, then it can fundamentally shift the way that we're thinking about commercial space right now. Everything in commercial space has, you know, earth data tie ins. But once we prove we can operate on that other planetary body, then. Really, you know, I would say sky's the limit, but stars of the limit on what we can do out in space. We can build mega structures, We can have space tourism and we can access the resources and power that are available beyond earth orbit. So where do you hope to take lunar outpost in the future? It's yeah, it's a good question, Shannon. I mean, step one prove that it's possible to prove that we can operate on the moon. And I think we've taken quite a few steps towards that And every launch every step including Artemis one I think is perfectly suited to prove that it's possible. Step number two is we're providing those mobility services on other planetary bodies. So similar to how to launch companies today provide access to certain points in space. We provide access to certain points on planetary bodies. Step number three is building infrastructure that makes space sustainable. Uh, and we're gonna do that utilizing our robotic swarms. And then step number four comes back to resources. We have severe shortages of critical resources that are needed for all sorts of industry here on earth, including aerospace, including energy including even the clean energy transition. Um, and those resources are available in space. So if we can find a cleaner, better way to access resources without destroying our environments here on earth and frankly accessing the unlimited resources of space, then that truly fundamentally changes the way that we operate as humanity. So that's where we're headed. But certainly we know we got to get to step one which is landing and operating that rover autonomy. Well, I say, forget the race to the moon or the race to outer space. It looks like you're in a race to live there, and I think it's definitely gonna be possible Justin Cyrus, thank you so much from the lunar outpost. We appreciate your time.