NASA Is Hiring Private Contractors To Retrieve Moon Dust

"The new space race continues to accelerate as hints of the commercialization of
space and the exploitation of space-based materials loom. Just today, NASA
issued an unprecedented solicitation titled “Purchase of Lunar Regolith and/or
Rock Materials from Contractor.� The solicitation asks contractors to bid on an
effort to retrieve between 50g and 500g of lunar regolith, or moon dust, and
bring it back to Earth before 2024. The amount of material retrieved does not
affect the overall price of the contract, and the contract will be awarded on
the basis of being "low price, technically acceptable." Offers are due by
October 9, 2020.

Contractors must provide stringent proof of collection, including giving NASA
imagery of the collection, the collected material, and a means of identifying
the exact location from which the regolith was retrieved. Collected materials
may be any type of lunar regolith, including dusts, rocks, or even ice. NASA
reserves the right to independently verify that actual collection took place.

According to the solicitation, “NASA will determine and use such independent
verification methods that will not interfere with Contractor’s activities.� All
analysis and assessment of materials will be conducted by NASA.

Nearly the entire surface of our Moon is covered in regolith, made up of small,
loose fragments of rock produced by billions of years of meteoroid and
micrometeoroid impacts. There is also lunar soil or lunar dust, a finer subset
of regolith with fragments smaller than 1cm. The terms lunar regolith and lunar
soil are often used interchangeably, and from the wording of NASA’s
solicitation, it doesn’t seem like the space agency is too picky about what
types of regolith are brought back to Earth.

See:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ieve-moon-dust