NASA Awards Nearly $1 Billion in Moon Base Contracts to Blue Origin, Astrolab, Lunar Outpost, and Firefly
NASA awarded contracts for lunar terrain vehicles, cargo landers, and a drone survey mission on May 26, marking the first concrete procurement step under the Moon Base program announced in March.
Overview
NASA awarded nearly $1 billion in contracts on May 26 for the first hardware components of its Moon Base program, selecting two companies to build crewed lunar terrain vehicles, one to deliver them to the surface, and a fourth to carry reconnaissance drones to the lunar south pole. The awards mark the first concrete procurement step since the agency announced the Moon Base initiative in March, when it outlined a $20 billion plan to establish a sustained human presence near the lunar south pole.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the program’s ambition plainly: “The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” according to the NASA press release.
Lunar Terrain Vehicles: Two Winners, One Economy
NASA selected two companies to develop Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTVs) that astronauts and remote operators will use to traverse the lunar south pole. Astrolab received a $219 million contract for its Crewed Lunar Vehicle (CLV-1), which weighs approximately 2,000 pounds and can travel at 6 miles per hour or more on level terrain, according to NASA. Lunar Outpost received $220 million for its Pegasus rover, which can reach 9 miles per hour and is designed to operate for up to one year under manual, autonomous, or teleoperated control, NASA said.
Isaacman explained the dual-vendor approach directly: “building one exquisite LTV does nothing to stimulate a lunar economy,” SpacePolicyOnline reported. Both rovers must be delivered to the moon before the first crewed Artemis landing, currently targeted for 2028.
Blue Origin received a $188 million contract — with an option period valued at an additional $280.4 million — to transport both rovers to the lunar surface aboard its uncrewed Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance cargo lander, SpacePolicyOnline reported.
MoonFall: Scout Drones for the South Pole
Firefly Aerospace received a $75 million contract — separate from the launch cost, which NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will procure independently — to build a spacecraft that will carry three or four hopping reconnaissance drones to the moon in 2028, according to SpacePolicyOnline. The drones, developed by JPL, will be transported aboard Firefly’s Elytra Dark spacecraft and deployed to scout the poorly understood lunar south polar region.
The MoonFall drones are designed to hop between sites to maximize scientific objectives, mark the perimeter of the future base, and reduce uncertainty about terrain ahead of crewed arrivals, Space.com reported.
Three Uncrewed Landers in 2026
Alongside the hardware contracts, NASA announced three near-term cargo deliveries to the lunar surface, all targeting launches before the end of 2026 under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) framework.
Moon Base I, the first of the three, will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to deliver a Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies instrument and a Laser Retroreflective Array to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge, targeting a fall 2026 launch, per SpacePolicyOnline. Isaacman called it “the first privately funded lunar lander mission in history,” SpacePolicyOnline noted.
Moon Base II will fly Astrobotic’s Griffin lander to the Nobile Crater region carrying more than 1,100 pounds of cargo, including Astrolab’s FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP) rover and a lunar retroreflector array, with a focus on maturing mobility systems for future terrain vehicles, according to NASA and SpacePolicyOnline.
Moon Base III will deploy Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lander carrying the Lunar Vertex experiment, which will study lunar magnetic anomalies known as lunar swirls. The mission also carries payloads from the European Space Agency and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, NASA said.
Intuitive Machines’ two prior lunar landers — Odysseus in 2024 and Athena in 2025 — both landed but tipped over on the surface.
A Base Spanning Hundreds of Square Miles
The May 26 briefing at NASA headquarters also offered the most detailed public picture yet of what the finished moon base is intended to look like. Carlos García-Galán, the Moon Base program manager, described a distributed campus: “We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles, with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence,” Space.com reported.
NASA chief architect Nujoud Merancy elaborated on the logic behind the sprawl: “You’ll have the habitats on the tops of the hills where they get sunlight. Power systems need to be a kilometer or more away for radiation protection,” according to Space.com.
The program is structured in three phases: Phase One through 2029 focuses on gathering surface data and establishing reliable access; Phase Two from 2029 to 2032 targets initial operating capability; and Phase Three from 2032 onward aims at semi-permanent crew presence, Space.com reported.
Isaacman also addressed the geopolitical dimension of the race to the lunar south pole: “I think it’s important for us to get there first…we also obviously want to be very mindful of the Outer Space Treaty,” Space.com reported.
What Comes Next
NASA’s Moon Base program manager García-Galán said more CLPS mission announcements will come in June. The agency released a next-generation lander solicitation — CLPS 2.0 — on May 15, with proposals due June 30, 2026, according to NASA. More than 12 total Moon Base missions are planned, NASA said.
Key uncertainties remain: the precise landing sites for Moon Base II and III have not been finalized, the exact number of MoonFall drones — three or four — has not been decided, SpacePolicyOnline noted, and no mission has been announced to demonstrate in-space refueling, a prerequisite for Starship’s role as the crewed Artemis lander.