At a Moon Base briefing at NASA Headquarters in Washington on Tuesday, the agency named the first three uncrewed missions that will begin building sustained operations at the lunar South Pole ahead of crewed Artemis landings in 2028. Moon Base I, targeting no earlier than fall 2026, will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to deliver science instruments to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge. Moon Base II, also planned for this year, will send more than 1,100 pounds of cargo on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, including Astrolab’s FLIP rover. Moon Base III, likewise targeted for 2026, will fly Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lander carrying the Lunar Vertex investigation alongside payloads from ESA and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. NASA said more than a dozen missions will be announced this year, each aimed at reducing risk ahead of crewed surface operations.
NASA also awarded two contracts totaling $439 million for the first phase of Lunar Terrain Vehicles: $219 million to Astrolab for its CLV-1 crewed rover, which weighs about 2,000 pounds and can exceed 6 mph on level terrain, and $220 million to Lunar Outpost for its Pegasus rover, capable of manual, autonomous, or teleoperated driving at over 9 mph for up to a year. Both are to be delivered to the surface by 2028 via the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. To transport these rovers to the South Pole region, Blue Origin received a separate $188 million award with an option period worth an additional $280.4 million. NASA also shared that Firefly Aerospace has been selected to build the spacecraft for MoonFall, a JPL-led mission that will deploy four drones to survey potential Artemis landing sites, with launch targeted for 2028.
The event also covered CLPS 2.0, the next generation of cargo lander procurement. Its final request for proposals was released May 15, with industry responses due June 30. Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the Moon Base program as “America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” saying every mission — crewed and uncrewed — would be a learning opportunity toward an eventual crewed Mars mission.