In a Rye, Colorado, cattle pasture now subbing for the moon, an otherworldly vehicle bumps along a scrubby course of furrows and mounds, weaving around rocks and kicking up a fine dust. It’s an open-concept machine dubbed Falcon—a silver solar-powered rectangular frame on wheels, with a partial roof, windowless sides, and a spacious cockpit flanked by monitors and steering controls. An engineer sits in one of its two seats for safety as the vehicle autonomously navigates around obstacles to a location dictated by Mission Control 160 miles away.
Suddenly, a wheel hits a rock, and Falcon halts, relaying real-time feedback to Mission Control. There, an operator revises a command for another attempt, driving home the hurdles in developing novel spacefaring technology.
“We don’t stage any of this for you guys,” laughs Justin Cyrus. “We show you real testing.”
Our play-by-play guide is the 32-year-old CEO and founder of Lunar Outpost, a rising star in the space robotics and mobility field. In less than a decade, the Denver area startup has already operated technology on Mars, landed the first commercial rover on the moon, and lined up another six lunar and cislunar missions with government and commercial partnerships—the most of any private company. Now, it’s vying with two other firms to build NASA’s next-generation lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) to shuttle Artemis V astronauts and experiments in 2030. At stake: a contract worth up to $4.6 billion. NASA is slated to make its decision this month.
