NASA announced this weekend that eight aerospace companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, are now eligible to compete for up to $10 billion in contracts to deliver cargo and build infrastructure for a planned permanent base at the Moon’s south pole.
The announcement came at the MAX POWER aerospace expo and air show at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems and Voyager Technologies can now all bid on future lunar delivery missions under an updated version of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. That framework carries a combined ceiling of $10 billion over 10 years, a cap on future task orders rather than money already committed. NASA also raised the limit on its existing CLPS contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to fund the early phase of the base effort.
Blue Origin separately won a $94 million contract to carry NASA’s nuclear-powered PROMISE rover, short for Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration, to the lunar south pole. A performance-based option could add another $140 million. The six-wheeled rover will study the surface and subsurface near the pole, including areas thought to hold water ice. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build it from spare flight hardware and engineering test models originally made for the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. Blue Origin plans to fly it to the Moon aboard its Mark 1 lander, with launch targeted for late 2028 and a mission expected to run 18 months.
NASA also awarded six transportation task orders worth roughly $1.3 billion combined to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space. Those missions will test technology for shuttling cargo between Earth and the Moon, including navigation systems and robotic drones meant to scout landing sites ahead of time.
In a related move, NASA selected SpaceX for a demonstration under an existing lunar logistics contract. The company will use its Starship rocket to deploy communications satellites into the region between Earth and the Moon in 2028, a step toward a communications network linking astronauts, mission controllers and future lunar infrastructure.
NASA also announced awards to Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, along with Redwire and Yank Technologies, to build components of a planned power and communications tower for the lunar surface. The system is meant to combine solar power with wireless power transfer to support operations on the Moon.
NASA said the combined projects are meant to establish a sustained American presence at the Moon’s south pole, with commercial partners delivering equipment and infrastructure before any astronauts arrive. The agency has said it wants to use lunar operations as a step toward future crewed missions to Mars.
“We are building the Moon Base mission by mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said. “When our astronauts return to the Moon, they will arrive with the first elements of the Moon Base already waiting for them on the surface.”
NASA officials George Alderman, Isaacman, Carlos Garcia-Galan, Nicky Fox and Danya Ise appeared together at the November 7 update on the Moon base plans. The announcement followed an Oval Office meeting on October 28, when President Donald Trump met with Isaacman and members of the Artemis III crew.
