NASA selected eight companies for a 10-year, $10 billion follow-on to its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and awarded about $1.3 billion in launch and in-space transport task orders for its Moon Base effort.
The agency announced the awards and mission updates on Saturday, Nov. 7, at the MAX POWER aerospace expo at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The package also includes a nuclear-powered rover, a lunar communications demonstration and surface power hardware.
The CLPS 2 companies are Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies. They are now eligible to compete for individual delivery missions. NASA also raised the value of the current CLPS contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will manage the PROMISE rover (Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration) and build it from spare flight parts and engineering test models for the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. NASA is targeting late 2028 for launch and planning an 18-month mission.
Blue Origin received a $94 million base contract, with a $140 million performance-based option, to deliver the rover on its Mark 1 lander, expanding the task order it won in May to deliver two lunar terrain vehicles.
The $1.3 billion covers six task orders under the Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract, awarded to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space to carry Moon Base cargo, including NASA’s MoonFall drones to survey the South Pole. SpaceX will also launch communications satellites on Starship to cislunar space in 2028, and Honeybee Robotics, Redwire and Yank Technologies won awards for parts of a Mini-Communications and Solar Tower (miniCAST).
The awards build on the Moon Base plan NASA unveiled in May, when it laid out the first three missions and picked Blue Origin to deliver two lunar terrain vehicles. In June it added about $600 million in CLPS awards for four deliveries landing in late 2028. The first element of the base is due to launch in December, with robotic missions following almost monthly from early 2027, NASA said in October.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency is “building the Moon Base mission by mission” and that astronauts will arrive to find “the first elements of the Moon Base already waiting for them on the surface.”
NASA plans a solicitation for the fully integrated surface power systems in early 2027 and a separate call to fill Moon Base data gaps.
