2016

A plan emerges to have one of the Lunar CATALYST partners deliver Resource Prospector to the lunar surface.

2017

The Trump administration pivots NASA back to the Moon.

Feb. 12, 2018

The new NASA budget introduces two lunar surface initiatives: Advanced Cislunar and Surface Capabilities (ACSC) and Lunar Discovery and Exploration. ACSC is part of the agency’s human spaceflight division, while Lunar Discovery and Exploration will be managed by the planetary science division. The two initiatives will help commercial partners develop and test cheap lunar landing technologies; some early payload capacities mentioned in the budget are 200, and then 500 kilograms. Resource Prospector would require the 500-kilogram variant.

From there, NASA would scale up to 5,000 or 6,000-kilogram payloads, which would be large enough to handle a crewed lander.

But the budget request also cancels Resource Prospector, with a pledge to move the mining instruments to future landers under the Lunar Discovery and Exploration program.

April 26, 2018

LEAG, the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), sends a letter to new NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine protesting the Resource Prospector cancellation, arguing the mission is vital to NASA's lunar exploration goals. The letter says the mission could be ready to fly by 2022, and a later comment by Moon Express states the company's future 500-kilogram lander would be ready in time to support that.

April 27, 2018

NASA re-iterates that the Resource Prospector instruments will be flown on future landers under its new lunar surface initiatives, in both an update to the Resource Prospector website and a tweet by Jim Bridenstine.

NASA releases its Commercial Lunar Payload Services solicitation for companies interested in providing "end-to-end payload services" between the Earth and Moon.

May 2018

Resource Prospector advocates argue that by transitioning the instruments from a single rover to multiple landers, NASA is unnecessarily delaying the project, and losing the key benefit of being able to visit multiple sites.

May 3, 2018

NASA further defends the cancellation by saying Resource Prospector was a "one-time effort to explore a specific location on the Moon, and as designed, now is too limited in scope for the agency's expanded lunar exploration focus." Furthermore, "NASA’s return to the Moon will include many missions to locate, extract and process elements across bigger areas of the lunar surface."

In an email replying to questions about costs, a NASA spokesperson tells me the agency spent $22 million on RESOLVE, and $80 million on Resource Prospector. There was no cost estimate for getting Resource Prospector ready for a 2022 launch; the mission had yet to complete its preliminary design review. It's unlikely Resource Prospector would have met its original $250 million budget: even a Falcon 9 launch would likely cost $90 million or more, based on TESS and DSCOVR costs. That would leave just $80 million left to build the flight rover and instruments, and pay for a lander.