San Antonio lunar research plan supports NASA moon, Mars goals

Three San Antonio-based research institutions are partnering to propel lunar exploration and construction with the goal of fulfilling NASA’s use of the moon for science, discovery and economic benefit while setting the stage for Mars exploration. The new agreement for a National Lunar Research Center initiative is a collaboration between Southwest Research Institute and the WEX Foundation — both nonprofits — and Astroport Space Technologies Inc. The proposal aims to bring the moon to San Antonio on a 180-acre swath of land owned by and adjacent to SwRI’s headquarters on the city’s West Side, a site that will be used to simulate the geography of the moon’s de Gerlache Ridge, a site between craters that can offer a prime landing location for NASA. It will also be “the footprint” of NASA’s Artemis Moon Base, which has a goal of maintaining a semi-permanent crew presence on the moon by 2032. Astroport founder and CEO Sam Ximenes said his space construction firm’s lunar civil engineering work for NASA has established “a clear engineering baseline for construction on the Moon.” The new lunar initiative “will provide the infrastructure needed to rehearse these complex operations at scale, validating site preparation and infrastructure tools on Earth for safety and endurance before they are committed to a lunar manifest,” Ximenes said in a statement. SwRI’s space business has grown rapidly in the past decade. It has added staff, tripled the number of researchers working in its Small Spacecraft Development program and built a $35 million, 74,000-square-foot space system integration facility. In 2025, SwRI reported its consolidated revenues hit a record high of $966 million and that the organization contributed more than $1.7 billion to San Antonio’s economy.