---
type: source
title: "NASA LIFT-1 Lunar Oxygen Extraction Demo: RFI Released 2023, No Contract Award by April 2026"
author: "NASA STMD / SpaceNews"
url: https://spacenews.com/nasa-awards-contracts-for-lunar-technologies-and-ice-prospecting-payload/
date: 2026-04-28
domain: space-development
secondary_domains: []
format: research-synthesis
status: processed
processed_by: astra
processed_date: 2026-04-28
priority: high
tags: [ISRU, lunar-resources, water-ice, extraction, NASA, LIFT-1, propellant-production, cislunar-economy]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

NASA's Lunar Infrastructure Foundational Technologies-1 (LIFT-1) program was initiated with an RFI (Request for Information) in November 2023, seeking industry input on how to competitively fund a Moon mission to demonstrate ISRU technologies — specifically extracting oxygen from lunar soil and rocks. NASA described the primary objective as demonstrating "technologies to extract oxygen from lunar soil, to inform eventual production, capture, and storage."

As of April 2026 (2.5 years after the RFI), no public contract award announcement has been found. The program appears to still be in pre-contract or early acquisition stages.

NASA's ISRU website and NTRS (Technical Reports Server) confirm active ISRU development but focus on technology maturation, not a specific near-term funded flight mission for extraction demonstration.

Separate from LIFT-1: NASA and DoE are collaborating on a 40kW Fission Surface Power system for lunar demonstration by early 2030s. This addresses the POWER prerequisite for ISRU extraction (which requires ~10 kW per kg of oxygen produced), but does not address the extraction step directly.

ESA's 2025 ISRU demonstration goal (water/oxygen production from lunar resources, implemented via commercial services, hardware built by Belgium's Space Applications Services) appears to have not been executed. No mission launch or new ESA timeline announcement found.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is the critical gap in the ISRU prerequisite chain. Characterization (VIPER, LUPEX) maps the resource. Extraction demonstration converts it to propellant. Propellant depot uses it. The whole cislunar economy's ISRU layer depends on the extraction step — and that step has NO funded mission in the 2028-2032 window from any actor globally. The 30-year attractor state requires this step. It's missing.

**What surprised me:** The absence is wider than expected. I expected NASA to have made some contract award on LIFT-1 by now. Three years from RFI to no award is slow even by NASA standards. ESA's 2025 goal being missed (with no public rescheduling) is also a stronger silence than expected. This is institutional, not just technical.

**What I expected but didn't find:** I expected to find at least one commercial company (Honeybee Robotics, Redwire, or a startup) with a funded extraction demonstration mission in the 2028-2032 window. None found. The commercial ISRU roadmaps target "profitable by 2035" but have no funded demo mission.

**KB connections:** Directly relevant to [[the 30-year space economy attractor state is a cislunar industrial system with propellant networks lunar ISRU orbital manufacturing and partial life support closure]] — specifically challenges the ISRU sub-layer. Also relevant to [[water is the strategic keystone resource of the cislunar economy because it simultaneously serves as propellant life support radiation shielding and thermal management]] — the keystone resource has no funded extraction demo.

**Extraction hints:** Primary claim: "No funded lunar ISRU water extraction demonstration mission exists from any space agency or commercial entity for the 2028-2032 window, creating a critical gap in the cislunar propellant chain's prerequisite sequence." Secondary claim: "NASA's LIFT-1 ISRU extraction demonstration program remained at pre-contract RFI stage 2.5 years after solicitation, suggesting institutional friction as much as technical uncertainty."

**Context:** LIFT-1 is distinct from CLPS characterization missions (VIPER, PRIME-1). It's the first step specifically toward extraction, not characterization. The gap between characterization and extraction is a known challenge in ISRU roadmaps but this research confirms it is unfunded and unscheduled across all actors.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)

PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[the 30-year space economy attractor state is a cislunar industrial system with propellant networks lunar ISRU orbital manufacturing and partial life support closure]]

WHY ARCHIVED: Confirms a structural gap in the prerequisite chain for Belief 4 (cislunar attractor achievable in 30 years). The ISRU extraction demonstration step is unfunded and unscheduled globally — not delayed, not underfunded, but entirely absent from any space actor's near-term mission manifest for 2028-2032.

EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the gap structure: characterization (VIPER/LUPEX) is addressed, extraction (LIFT-1 at RFI stage, no award) is missing, propellant production (conceptual) is further out. The claim should be about the structural sequence gap, not just the absence of one mission.
