LL_RFI.docx

December 9, 2025

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

Surface LIDAR Requirements for Extraterrestrial Rovers Issue Date: 12/22/2025 Responses Due By: 2/5/2026

Introduction NASA’s Artemis Program intends to return humanity to the Moon for surface exploration to enable scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to establish a long-term presence on the Moon enabling future human missions to Mars. Lunar exploration in the 21st century will involve both commercial and international partnerships and include both smaller, autonomous rovers [1,2] and larger vehicles capable of enabling extended exploration ranges and long-duration missions [3,4,5]. For perspective, the Apollo 11 crew remained within 55 meters of the Eagle lander on the initial moonwalks and the addition of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) on later missions enabled exploration ranges of up to 7.6 km from the Challenger lander on Apollo 17. Artemis missions intend to enable exploration ranges of up to 10 km from the lander using the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) and up to 20 km from a safe haven via cooperative traverse between the LTV and Pressurized Rover (PR) [7]. Additionally, while Apollo exploration was focused in the lunar mare in the equatorial region, Artemis intends to focus exploration near the lunar South Pole.

Prior planetary rovers, such as Curiosity and Perseverance, navigate on the surface by using a stereo pair of cameras. These stereo cameras enable rover navigation by detecting geometric hazards within the field of view, localizing by correlating projected panoramas to orbital imagery, and aggregating point clouds into exploration maps [8]. However, the lunar South Pole region imposes unique challenges for exploration and navigation. Notably, the low elevation angle of the sun causes long shadows from terrain features, and the lunar regolith can exhibit stark differences in appearance between illuminated and shadowed areas, as shown in Figure 1. Additionally, a lack of unique landmarks causes difficulties with depth perception [9].

These challenges motivate exploring use of other navigation sensors beyond camera imagery alone. LIght Detection, and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors, with the ability to directly measure range and robustness to external illumination conditions, appear to be a natural candidate to address these challenges. Indeed, an effective, low Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) LIDAR has been considered the holy grail of navigating planetary surface rovers for decades. However, despite long heritage for rendezvous, descent, and landing space applications and the proliferation of terrestrial LIDAR for automotive purposes, NASA has yet to select a LIDAR as a navigation sensor for its surface rover missions, and missions in development which are proposing terrestrial LIDAR stand-ins have high residual risks in the path to flight.

Figure 1 – Lighting conditions around Shackleton Crater (right) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Narrow Angle Camera image M1195011983LR [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

Proposed LIDAR Risk Mitigation Effort To reduce the risk of LIDAR infusion for future rover missions both on the Moon and on Mars, NASA is performing a survey, testing, and roadmapping effort for 3-D LIDAR to understand varied needs, assess capability gaps using quantitative test data, and identify routes for LIDAR maturation and infusion while maturing internal LIDAR testbeds for evaluation. As the first part of this risk mitigation process, NASA seeks to understand Key Driving Requirements (KDRs) for navigation from current and future lunar missions to serve as the foundation for an engineering trade. With the goal of catalyzing commercial lunar exploration, it is prudent to solicit feedback from industry to understand the navigation requirements for potential lunar surface missions, and any identified Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) for LIDAR sensors either baselined or traded for lunar or future Martian missions. Identifying these KDRs and KPPs will assist NASA in supporting evaluation pipelines, test cases, and standardized metrics for rover surface navigation, enabling objective sensor comparisons across different manufacturers and modalities. NASA intends to facilitate navigation testing of candidate sensors in simulated lunar and Martian terrain in the future and releasing the test data to the public for industry use and adoption.

Input Requested NASA is issuing this RFI to obtain information for the following reasons:

1. Identify KDRs for surface rover navigation, along with associated rationales.

2. Identify KPPs for surface navigation sensors.

3. Identify flight-forward sensor candidates and modalities of interest.

Responses should include the following:

1. Describe your mission architecture and LIDAR use cases.

a. What are the limiting factors and requirements that drive interest in LIDAR technology beyond traditional (e.g. vision-only) approaches?

b. NASA is primarily interested in navigation, operations, and mapping needs, although descriptions of your use cases for other purposes are also welcome.

c. NASA is further interested in suggestions of test cases and test outcomes that are of high value to your mission for adoption of LIDAR.

2. Which sensor candidates and/or modalities are you interested in?

a. e.g., spinning, full frame, velocimetry, etc.

3. What are important factors for your interest in a particular LIDAR sensor and making a selection?

a. e.g., SWAP-C, point density, computational offload, etc.

4. What are your concerns with using a LIDAR sensor modality or navigation in general?

5. Is there anything else about LIDAR that you wish to convey to planetary mission stakeholders?

6. If this requirement were to become a valid procurement, does your company consider this to be commercially available or would this be a non-commercial requirement?

7. The initial assessment for a NAICS code and PSC code is 334511 and 6640, respectively. Does your company agree with this assessment, or do you recommend a different code?

8. If this requirement were to become a valid procurement, does your company foresee many opportunities for subcontracting, or would this largely be performed in-house? If there are subcontracting opportunities, do you foresee many different options or limited?

Note that any responses to this RFI are voluntary and will remain internal to NASA. This RFI is neither associated with, nor will have any impact on, any ongoing procurements. NASA does not intend for responses to this RFI to be structured as a proposal. Responses should be relatively succinct, providing enough context to address the prompts, and can be casual in nature.

Instructions for Submittal Please provide a concise summary with your response. The summary shall include:

· Company's name, address, primary POC, and telephone number,

· Company's socioeconomic size classification (Large, Small, Small Disadvantaged, 8(a), Woman-Owned, Veteran-Owned, Service-Disabled Veteran, Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone); number of years in business, Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), CAGE code (if applicable).

· A description of the Company's specific capabilities that are relevant to the RFI requirements.

RFI Respondents should submit replies electronically to: Mr. Stephen Noethen, Contracting Officer, JSC Office of Procurement – BH at Stephen.d.noethen@nasa.gov. The subject line of the e-mail shall read "Surface LIDAR KPP and KDR RFI.” Responders may submit proprietary information, export-controlled information (including International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) restricted information), or confidential information in response to this RFI, but this is strictly voluntary. Responses that contain proprietary, Export Administration Regulations (EAR), ITAR, or other controlled unclassified information (CUI), are required to clearly mark that data accordingly. ITAR/EAR data is allowed to be sent through email or file transfer if properly labeled as such (see pages 29-30 of the NASA Guidebook for Proposers at:

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/procurement/nraguidebook/proposer2018.pdf

Please use 12-point Times New Roman font where paragraphed, as well as single spaced pages printed one-sided. There is a 10 (ten) page limit on the response.

Path Forward NASA is in Year 1 of the LIDAR risk mitigation activity. Representative testing on a low-speed platform is planned in CY2026 with follow-on testing on a high-speed platform in CY2027.

Upon receipt of responses to this RFI, NASA plans to use these submissions to inform testing roadmap development and strategize industry engagement in Year 2. NASA is considering hosting an industry workshop for knowledge sharing, releasing non-proprietary LIDAR test data, and offering analog test opportunities as a part of its industry engagement strategy.

References [1] A. Colaprete, D. Lim, and K. Ennico-Smith, “Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER),” NASA, 2021.

[2] J. Baker, J. Elliott, J. Keane, N. Khan, R. Kornfeld, H. Nayar, and I. Nesnas, “The Endurance lunar rover sample return mission”, in IEEE Aero. Conf., Big Sky, USA, Mar. 2024.

[3] H. Litaker, O. Bekdash, T. Phillips-Hungerford, A. Frangoudis, N. Scharunovych, L. Douglas, R. Howard, and N. Howard, “Preliminary human factors evaluations of lunar terrain vehicle design concepts at NASA JSC,” in IEEE Aero. Conf., Big Sky, USA, Mar. 2023.

[4] “NASA, Japan advance space cooperation, sign agreement for lunar rover,” www.nasa.gov, 2024.

[5] R. Biesbroek, H. Lakk, B. Lamaze, M. Landgraf, N. Gollins, J. Smith, P. Zaltron, T. Adam, K. Stephenson, A. Barco, M. Vuolo, M. Holmberg, D. De Wilde, D. Binns, D. Brandao, P. Hager, M. Solyga, and C. Buti, “Moon village: Conceptual design of a lunar habitat,” European Space Agency, Concurrent Design Facility, Tech. Rep., 2020.

[6] “Thales Alenia Space signs a contract with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to develop the first human outpost on the lunar surface,” Thales Alenia Space, 2025.

[7] N. Mary, “Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program (EHP) Integrated Concept of Operations (ConOps),” NASA, 2024.

[8] M. Maimone, N. Patel, A. Sabel, A. Holloway, and A. Rankin, “Visual odometry thinking while driving for the Curiosity Mars Rover’s three-year test campaign: Impact of evolving constraints on verification and validation”, in IEEE Aero. Conf., Big Sky, USA, Mar. 2022.

[9] Apollo Mission Evaluation Team, “Apollo 14 Mission Report,” NASA, 1971.

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