NASA awards nearly $600 million for four new Moon Base cargo landings, targeting late 2028

NASA has awarded nearly $600 million to three commercial companies to deliver four new science missions to the Moon in late 2028, the agency announced Tuesday. Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines will carry NASA payloads to the lunar surface under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, part of a wider push to build a lasting outpost near the lunar South Pole.

Astrobotic received $297.9 million for two deliveries, while Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines each won a single delivery, worth $144.2 million and $148.3 million respectively. NASA said each company will fly an updated version of a lander it has already flown, an approach the agency described as a way to reach the Moon more often.

“These new awards to our commercial partners, totaling nearly $600 million to land more missions on the Moon with science payloads, demonstrate our commitment to accelerating our effort to build a long-term presence on the lunar surface,” said Lori Glaze, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate.

The same three instruments, flown four times

Each of the four landings will carry an identical set of three NASA instruments. The Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume Surface Studies, or SCALPSS, is an array of four cameras that builds a 3D picture of how a lander’s engine exhaust disturbs lunar dust during descent, data NASA needs as heavier spacecraft begin landing near one another.

The Laser Retroreflector Array is a passive, cookie-sized device of eight quartz corner-cube prisms that reflects laser beams from orbiters and landers to help them fix their position. The Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer measures the strength and type of radiation striking the surface, information used to design safer missions and protect future crews.

“By flying the same science instruments on multiple landers, we will better understand potential hazards during landing and build out a global network of environmental data and location markers on the Moon,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “It’s akin to having weather stations in different locations on Earth.”

Part of a widening schedule

The awards come as NASA counts 17 lunar surface deliveries across multiple providers. Alongside them, the agency previewed further opportunities for industry, including landers to carry a power and avionics technology demonstration, another science manifest, and a South Pole optical imager, plus a planned lunar communication and navigation relay constellation to link Moon Base elements with Earth.

NASA also said it is considering sending PROMISE, short for Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration, an engineering development version of the Mars Perseverance rover, to study the lunar surface and prospect for resources. The agency said its experts would define possible roles for the rover, language that stops well short of a committed mission.

“We’re building a proving ground for Moon Base operations,” said Ryan Stephan, NASA’s Moon Base acting director of cargo landers. “Accelerating our Moon mission ordering cadence and launch opportunities enable us to move quickly to learn, iterate, and improve.”

Together, the four landings would place the same instruments at separate sites across the Moon, the start of what NASA calls a network of environmental data and location markers for the missions still to come.