Lunar Outpost

Astrolab,

Lunar Outpost.

Congratulations to Astrobotic, Firefly, Intuitive Machines.

Great progress.

Now, the first I heard about Project Horizon was reading it in Philip Corso, Colonel Philip Corso's book, The Day After Roswell, where he had a whole chapter on Project Horizon and what it meant for the US Army.

And I thought it was a very curious addition because it's like, well, why are you including plans for this moon base that the Army had back in the 1950s? Late 1950s, the Army came up with Project Horizon.

Why are you including those plans in your book? if this base never went ahead well the thing is the kind of like the message behind what course i was trying to relay was that officially it never went ahead but covertly it's a completely different story so what i think happened was that project horizon was covertly implemented as part of the of the agreements reached with the antarctica based germans and their intermediaries that's von braun's paperclip scientists that were heading up the apollo program in the 1960s and 70s in exchange for antarctica-based german expertise on extraterrestrial and advanced technologies nasa the u.s air force u.s army cia all provided the plans personnel and resources for establishing a secret moon base where the latter were junior partners so that's very important so i think project horizon did go ahead it was built as part of this overall agreement that had been reached behind the scenes between the Antarctica based Germans and the Eisenhower administration and that what that enabled was that you could have a lot of sharing of resources and the US would get a lot of expertise on how to develop and build these kind these these kinds of advanced technologies that utilize anti-gravity and other very significant technologies essential for space travel or for establishing lunar outposts and in exchange the the Germans in Antarctica, they got a lot of people, they got a lot of resources to expand their bases, not just on the moon, but also on Mars, Ceres and elsewhere in our solar system and beyond.

They actually went far beyond our solar system.

Welcome back to Space Commerce Week, I'm Tom Patton.

Lunar Outpost has selected a long-range LiDAR sensor from AI Inc. to help guide the Pegasus lunar terrain vehicle the rover NASA astronauts will use to cross the moon's surface as part of the Artemis program.

AI, based in Pleasanton, California, builds software-defined LiDAR sensors mainly for the automotive, defense and industrial markets.

Lunar Outpost, based in Golden, Colorado, is developing Pegasus under a NASA contract to transport crews at the Moon's south pole.

Neither company disclosed the dollar value of the sensor deal, describing it only as a multi-million dollar transaction.

It's separate from the roughly $220 million NASA award Lunar Outpost received in May to advance the Pegasus design.

AI chairman and CEO Matt Fish said space mobility represents a new market for the company and called the lunar environment the most demanding proving ground any sensor can face.

The sensor, called Apollo, can detect objects at ranges up to one kilometer.

Let's go! [chuckles] I wanna go fast.

Today we're visiting Lunar Outpost, A company NASA selected to build a new vehicle for the Moon.

You might remember this old lunar vehicle from the Apollo missions in the 1970s.

Their job is to totally reinvent it by designing a special new vehicle made for the future of space travel.

They will then send that location to the truck you see out there.

The truck will try to make its way to it, and you only get two shots to get all the way to the flag.

This challenge mimics how NASA and Lunar Outpost will remotely operate this truck on the Moon from Earth.

Instructions will go from Mission Control, travel all the way to the Moon, and then with a couple second's delay, tell the truck where to go and what to do.

Within weeks, the plan accelerated further.

On May 26, 2026, NASA awarded the first moon-based contracts to Blue Origin, Astrolab, Lunar Outpost and Firefly Aerospace.

Blue Origin would provide the Mark 1 endurance lander for Moonbase 1, targeted for launch no earlier than fall 2026.

Astrolab and Lunar Outpost would build the rovers.

Firefly would handle orbital relay infrastructure.

The agency unveiled a vision not of a single habitat module sitting alone in a crater, but of a distributed network of assets spanning hundreds of square miles across the South Pole region.