NASA on Saturday announced multiple contracts and mission updates for its Moon Base program, including commercial cargo deliveries, a new lunar rover and surface infrastructure.
The agency announced the awards at an aerospace expo at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA said the investments are part of its ongoing effort to establish a sustained human presence at the lunar South Pole.
For future cargo deliveries, NASA selected eight companies for the second phase of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The 10-year master contract allows the companies to compete to manage, build and operate landers, and it has a combined maximum value of $10 billion. NASA also increased the value of its first lunar delivery contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion.
NASA said it is developing a nuclear-powered, six-wheeled rover named PROMISE to explore the Moon’s South Pole. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build the rover using spare parts and engineering test models from the Mars Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. The vehicle will carry a drill to extract lunar dust from three feet below the surface, along with sensors and cameras to search for ice and other resources.
The agency is targeting late 2028 to launch the rover for an 18-month mission. Blue Origin received a $94 million base contract from NASA, which includes a performance-based option for another $140 million, to transport the rover to the Moon using its Mark 1 lander.
To build a space transportation network, NASA awarded six task orders worth approximately $1.3 billion to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space. These missions will use orbital transfer vehicles to carry large loads of cargo across space. Some missions will launch on rockets from Blue Origin, Relativity Space and SpaceX.
According to the agency, the transportation missions will test navigation, scout the lunar surface with drones and deliver a spacecraft called CAPSTONE 02. Under an existing lunar logistics contract, NASA also selected SpaceX to launch communications satellites aboard a Starship rocket in 2028.
For lunar surface infrastructure, NASA plans to purchase commercial components for a power and communications tower. The agency awarded contracts to Honeybee Robotics for energy storage, Redwire for power generation and Yank Technologies for wireless power transfer. NASA expects to request proposals for fully integrated power systems in early 2027.