NASA Lays Out First Moon Base Missions, Rover Contracts and Lunar Landers for South Pole Work

On Tuesday at NASA headquarters in Washington, agency leaders put dates, vehicles and dollar figures on what they are calling the Moon Base: a string of robotic and crewed steps toward a permanent presence at the lunar South Pole. The event laid out the first three Moon Base missions, two rover contracts, a launch contract for getting those rovers to the surface, and an update on a drone survey mission.

Administrator Jared Isaacman described the Moon Base as America's and humanity's first outpost on another celestial world. He said every mission, crewed or uncrewed, would be a chance to learn how to return to the surface, build infrastructure to stay, and master living in one of the most demanding environments imaginable. He thanked President Donald Trump, Congress, industry, international partners and NASA employees for supplying the resources to achieve the near-impossible. Days earlier, in an exclusive interview with the National News Desk's Kayla Gaskins, he had said NASA was moving aggressively on a revamped Artemis roadmap meant to avoid the long delays and technical setbacks of earlier missions.

Moon Base I is targeted to launch no earlier than fall 2026. It will use Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to carry NASA instruments, including the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies, which examines how thrusters interact with the lunar surface, and the Laser Retroreflective Array, which lets orbiting spacecraft pin down their position more precisely using reflected laser light. It will land on the Shackleton Connecting Ridge to demonstrate capabilities that reduce risk for crewed Artemis landings planned for 2028.

Moon Base II is planned for later this year. Astrobotic's Griffin lander will deliver more than 1,100 pounds of cargo, including Astrolab's FLIP rover, to mature mobility systems that will inform future lunar terrain vehicle operations. Moon Base III is also targeted for this year and carries the first payload chosen through NASA's Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon initiative. Its anchor investigation, Lunar Vertex, will fly on Intuitive Machines' Nova-C Trinity lander to study lunar swirls, the light patches on the surface, to understand how the surface evolves and how materials behave under extreme conditions. Payloads from the European Space Agency and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute will ride along. NASA said these are the first of more than a dozen missions to be announced this year.

On the ground-mobility side, NASA awarded Astrolab $219 million and Lunar Outpost $220 million for the first phase of lunar terrain vehicles. The awards come under Phase 1 High Achievability Mission task orders of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract, are firm-fixed-price and performance-based, and aim to put crewed and uncrewed mobility systems on the surface by 2028 through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

Astrolab's Crewed Lunar Vehicle, CLV1, is adapted from its FLEX architecture. It is designed to carry astronauts and supplies and support remote operations, with a compact stowed configuration, a mass of about 2,000 pounds and a speed above 6 mph on level ground. Lunar Outpost's Pegasus is a lighter, mission-ready evolution of its Eagle rover, built to NASA's updated requirements. It can operate for up to a year, drive manually, autonomously or by teleoperation, and exceed 9 mph. NASA says it draws on Apollo-heritage technology.

NASA said having multiple vehicles will speed technology demonstrations, inform site planning and lower operational risk, and will help it characterize terrain hazards, move materials and pre-stage resources. Over the next 18 months, both companies are to finalize designs, run crewed evaluations and qualify flight units. NASA plans to open the field to more vendors through onramp competitions. To get the rovers there, Blue Origin received a $188 million contract, with an option period worth $280.4 million, covering two task orders.

NASA also updated its MoonFall mission, which will send four drones flying across the lunar surface to survey potential Artemis landing sites. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California is designing and testing prototype hardware, and Firefly Aerospace has been selected to build the spacecraft carrying the drones from Earth orbit to the Moon. Launch is targeted for 2028. The drones will gather data and high-resolution imagery of rough terrain, and after each one's final flight its payload is expected to keep working for several months.

The next marker is the fall launch of Moon Base I, followed by the further mission announcements NASA has promised this year.