Draper Labs Sets Sights on a Far-Side Moon Landing Next Year

Cambridge-based Draper Labs is set to launch their NASA-funded CP-12 mission in 2026, racing Texas-based Firefly Aerospace to complete the United States’ first landing on the far side of the moon.

Draper’s mission, which was originally slated for later this year, is funded by a $73 million award through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Draper and Firefly are leading NASA’s only CLPS missions targeting a far side lunar landing.

“I’m hoping we’ll be first. But crazy things can happen,” said Alan R. Campbell, Draper’s Director of Growth and Capture for Space Systems.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lander, also part of the CLPS program, became the second private spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon’s surface on Sunday. The first was Intuitive Machines of Houston, which landed its Odysseus probe in February of last year.

Draper is working with space robotics company ispace technologies and contractor Karman Space and Defense. Their CP-12 payload will land in the moon’s Schrödinger basin and will contain seismometers, heat flow and electrical conductivity probes, and electric and magnetic field sensors that will help scientists better understand the moon’s structure and tectonic activity.

Draper will handle the probe’s descent, navigation, and control — often the most challenging and delicate part of such missions. Their leading role in this mission harkens back to their essential work on the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing.

“It’s based on technology that we’ve been working on all the way back to Apollo for the descent guidance,” Campbell said. “The terrain-relative navigation, hazard detection are research that we’ve done both internally and with NASA for about the last 15 years,” he added.

In Kendall Square, which is a hub for startups and a coveted destination for biopharmaceutical giants, Draper stands out as an established national research and development company that has called Cambridge home for decades.

Draper was founded in 1932 by Charles Stark “Doc” Draper as MIT’s Aeronautical Instrumentation Laboratory, a teaching lab focused on military instrumentation and navigation technology.

But the company shifted to space technology in the late 1950s, securing a NASA contract for the Apollo mission after developing an idea for a Mars probe that would take a flyby picture of the planet.

Draper improved on its Mars probe computer to create the guidance, navigation, and control system for the 1969 Apollo moon landing. In 1963, 60 percent of US integrated circuit production was going to Draper’s Instrumentation Lab as it worked on the Apollo computers.

“The result was a computer that never failed,” said Philip D. Hattis, who has been with Draper since 1974.

“It was absolutely critical for crew survival that it worked, but it never failed on the ground, never failed in the air,” he added.

Now, the CP-12 mission represents the latest in Draper’s long and storied partnership with NASA. But as CLPS missions like Draper’s far-side lunar landing look ahead to approaching launches, some worry that the Trump administration will shift away from sending US missions to the moon.

The Artemis program — which funds CLPS — was established by President Trump’s Space Policy Directive 1 in 2017. But in his second term, Trump has been influenced by Elon Musk’s criticism of the program as a distraction from missions to Mars.

The president highlighted his goal to “plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars” in his inaugural address, to fist pumps from Musk. And earlier this year, the president sent back the moon rock displayed in the Oval Office to NASA.

Campbell said that no matter the Trump administration’s policies, Draper will continue to work successfully with NASA.

“Our mission at Draper is to solve our customers’ most challenging problems. And so whether that’s going to be lunar focused or Mars focused, we see a large role for us — an important role for us — because they’re both really hard problems,” he said.

Campbell acknowledged that Jared Isaacman, the recently-nominated NASA administrator, has a “different perspective.” But he added that he looks forward to seeing how the billionaire businessman and former SpaceX astronaut maintains “funding for continued NASA inspiration for the US, and for the world at large.”

Hattis said that missions to the moon are an essential step towards — not a deviation from — an eventual focus on Mars, as well as being essential in the ongoing international space race.

“You’ve also got the geopolitical consideration that the Chinese have said they’re going to get humans to the Moon by 2030,” he said. “Just about everything they’ve said in the last 10 years they’re going to do in space, they’ve accomplished.”

“It’s in the national interest to prevent a lunar land grab where the water resources are,” he added. “So there’s a lot of reasons why the Moon probably remains a waystation.”

Campbell said that the diversity within the US space industry — spanning startups, larger private companies like SpaceX and BlueOrigin, and public organizations — will ensure the sector’s resilience.

“It’s definitely got to be part of a broader ecosystem just to maintain resilience in case something unexpected happens within the broader environment,” he said. “You can just see a ton of companies — from startups, to legacy primes, to independent nonprofits like us — playing a key role in a lot of these missions.”

Draper plans to continue its more than 50-year legacy as a key player in the nation’s forays into space.

“We’re very proud of how closely we’ve worked with NASA over the years, and we are expecting to continue that as long as possible — as long as NASA is still NASA and Draper is still Draper,” Campbell said.

—Staff writer Stephanie Dragoi can be reached at stephanie.dragoi@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Thamini Vijeyasingam can be reached at thamini.vijeyasingam@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @vijeyasingam.