The Pegasus Lunar Terrain Vehicle is built to carry Artemis astronauts across the Moon's surface. AEye said on Monday that its Apollo lidar sensor will handle the navigation.
The deal, which AEye's September 1 press release describes as a multi-million-dollar contract, marks the company's entry into the space mobility market after years focused on automotive, defence and industrial customers. Apollo will manage terrain perception, obstacle detection and autonomous navigation for Pegasus, the vehicle at the centre of NASA's Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services programme.
Shares closed 27.83% higher at $1.4700, on dollar volume of about $199 million across roughly 374,000 trades, after the announcement.
Lunar Outpost picked Apollo for three properties the release names: a solid-state design with no moving parts to fail in the lunar vacuum or under the temperature swings and constant vibration of the Moon's surface; a software-defined architecture that lets operators adjust scan patterns in software without swapping hardware; and a compact form factor that preserves mass budget on a vehicle where every kilogram is accounted for.
"Space mobility is a new market opportunity for AEye," chairman and chief executive Matt Fisch said in the release, "and the lunar environment represents the most demanding proving ground any sensor can face: no atmosphere, no margin for error, and no opportunity for in-mission repair."
Lunar Outpost chief strategy officer Forrest Meyen said in the same release that the vehicle will help "begin building NASA's Moon Base" at the lunar South Pole, and that the programme required partners capable of scaling with it.
The release carries no scheduled date for Pegasus's first crewed traverse. What it does make clear is that once the vehicle reaches the surface, there is no way to repair or replace a sensor that fails.