NASA on Saturday announced new lunar cargo, rover, and transportation awards as it works with U.S. companies on a sustained presence at the Moon's South Pole, speaking at the MAX POWER aerospace expo at Kennedy Space Center in Florida¹.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, "We are building the Moon Base mission by mission"¹. Moon Base Program manager Carlos Garcia-Galan said the agency had consolidated efforts and awarded new contracts in the eight months since a campaign the agency calls Ignition¹.

NASA selected Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX, and Voyager Technologies for the next phase of Commercial Lunar Payload Services, called CLPS 2¹. Those firms can compete to manage, build, and fly landers that deliver NASA science, technology, and infrastructure payloads¹.

The agency described CLPS 2 as a 10-year, multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity master contract with a combined maximum value of $10 billion¹. It said it raised the current CLPS 1.0 contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion, with the original contract remaining through November 2028 and awarded deliveries allowed through November 2033¹.

NASA also said it is proceeding with PROMISE, a six-wheeled Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration, to land at the South Pole with science instruments and technology demonstrations¹. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a Caltech division, will manage the mission and assemble the rover from spare flight parts and engineering models from the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers¹.

The rover is to carry a drill to sample about 3 feet (1 meter) of regolith, spectrometers, temperature and radiation sensors, and cameras, NASA said¹. Blue Origin received a $94 million base contract, with a $140 million performance option, to deliver PROMISE, expanding a May 2026 task order to fly two lunar terrain vehicles¹.

Under the Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare contract, NASA awarded six task orders to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin, and Impulse Space to integrate and move Moon Base cargo¹. Planned work includes CAPSTONE 02 around the Moon, South Pole survey drones including MoonFall, and tests of commercial orbital transfer in cislunar space¹.

Some flights are expected on Blue Origin's New Glenn, Relativity Space's Terran R, and SpaceX's Falcon 9, with in-space transfer spacecraft from Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Impulse Space, and Quantum Space¹. NASA said it plans a directed NextSTEP-3 B call for architecture data gaps and a separate solicitation for fully integrated power systems in early 2027¹.

Sources

1. NASANASA Awards Moon Base Transportation, Technology, Science Projects5:47 PM

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