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At Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA is rapidly advancing its ambitious plans for a lunar base, placing orders for landers, rovers, and drones just weeks after the historic Artemis II mission circled the moon.
This week, the space agency unveiled the initial phase of its lunar base initiative, awarding contracts worth hundreds of millions to four American companies. Among them, Blue Origin, led by Jeff Bezos, will supply two landers to transport lunar buggies to the moon’s southern pole. These buggies, known as lunar terrain vehicles, will be crafted by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, fresh from its successful lunar landing last year, is set to deliver the first drones to the moon.
Ideally, this equipment will be in place before the anticipated arrival of Artemis astronauts on the moon, targeted for as early as 2028.
In April, the Artemis II mission saw four astronauts journey around the moon, reaching farther into space than the Apollo crews of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Looking ahead to Artemis III, scheduled for next year, another astronaut team will rehearse docking NASA’s Orion capsule with lunar landers being developed by Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, all while orbiting Earth.
During April’s Artemis II mission, four astronauts flew around the moon, traveling deeper into space than the Apollo moon crews did during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For next year’s Artemis III, another team of astronauts will practice docking NASA’s Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with the lunar landers being developed for crews by Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
NASA is targeting Artemis III for mid-2027, with a landing by two astronauts following as soon as 2028. The moon base’s second phase, from 2029 into the early 2030s, will start building up the permanent infrastructure, including a power grid. As for when the base will be ready to support astronauts for extended periods in specialized permanent habitats, that’s expected sometime in the 2030s, during the third phase.
“Then we’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, we’re permanently here and we’re not giving it up,’” said NASA’s moon base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan.
Garcia-Galan envisions a moon base sprawling over hundreds of square miles, with a perimeter marked by drones, dubbed MoonFall, stationed at the corners.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said these territory markers are meant to be respectful of other countries’ spacecraft and equipment that might be nearby. He expects reciprocity in the matter.
The goal of the moon base is to encourage a lunar economy while conducting scientific research and laying the foundation for a Mars expedition, Isaacman stressed.
“For those waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand and we will not slow down,” Isaacman said. “We are really just getting started.”
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