Lunar Outpost’s MAPP rover, built in Arvada, will also be the first rover ever to explore the Lunar South Pole, if it lands safely.
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Hurtling towards the moon right now, safely stored in a garage held against the side of a lunar lander, is a suitcase-sized robotic rover from Colorado. And it’s on course to make history, heralding the beginning of a commercial industry extracting mineral wealth from space.
On Wednesday, Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (or MAPP) rover launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The little rover was not the only important payload on the rocket; it wasn’t even the only one built in Colorado. The rocket also carried Lockheed Martin’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite up into space.
