VAULT: Volatile Autonomous Ultrawide-Band Lunar Tomographer

NASA’s Moon‑to‑Mars objectives require the ability to locate and characterize subsurface volatiles and geotechnical hazards to support a sustainable lunar presence. Current planetary Ground Penetrating Radar systems are limited to monostatic configurations that produce 2D radargrams, constraining science return and autonomous operations. VAULT leverages Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) proven Multistatic Imaging Radar capable of delivering real-time, centimeter-scale 3D subsurface imagery down to a 10-meter depth. Recent testbed evaluations by USGS, LLNL, and NASA Ames at the SSERVI lunar regolith facility have already demonstrated the system’s unique capability to resolve frozen volatiles at 5% weight concentrations. In collaboration with LTV providers, USGS, and LLNL, we have identified three key barriers towards advancement to lunar applications: data volumes that exceed lunar downlink capacity, commercial electronics unrated for extreme space environments, and the absence of an integrated flight architecture. VAULT addresses these challenges through a comprehensive mission design with payload accommodation architecture, a spaceflight electronics roadmap, and a closed-loop edge-computing autonomy framework. This autonomy system will process raw tomographic returns in real-time to actively guide rover trajectory decisions under USGS planetary science constraints. The project delivers a flight‑ready mission proposal package and space‑hardening roadmap, positioning Ames to lead future lunar efforts.

The primary goal of Project VAULT is to develop a validated reference architecture and an intelligent onboard autonomy suite to integrate Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) unique multistatic tomographic Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) onto a baseline Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) chassis under U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) science constraints. Develop add-on sensor reference architecture that provides the high-confidence, 3D volumetric data required to guide tactical rover operations. Rather than "drilling blind" and risking costly, time-consuming drilling or regolith-sampling maneuvers on uncharacterized ground, VAULT provides the detailed, contact-level subsurface mapping needed to de-risk and target sampling sites with high confidence.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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