WASHINGTON, July 1 — The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on June 30 announced roughly 590 million U.S. dollars in new contracts to send four robotic landers to the Moon by the end of 2028, drawing three commercial companies deeper into what the agency now calls its lunar base build-out.
Under the awards, made through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, Astrobotic Technology received two separate delivery contracts worth a combined 297.9 million dollars, Firefly Aerospace received a single-mission contract worth 144.2 million dollars, and Intuitive Machines received a single-mission contract worth 148.3 million dollars. All four missions are scheduled to reach the lunar surface by late 2028, with each lander carrying the same trio of scientific payloads.
The identical payloads on every mission include a four-camera stereo imaging system to study the effects of landing engine plumes on lunar dust, an array of laser retroreflectors intended to serve as fixed reference points for future surface navigation, and a linear energy transfer spectrometer designed to measure the radiation environment on the lunar surface. Officials said flying the same instruments on multiple landers would allow engineers to compare landing risks across sites and build a network of geolocated markers ahead of larger cargo and crewed missions.
Lori Glaze, associate administrator for the agency’s human spaceflight mission directorate, said the new awards, which she put at close to 600 million dollars in total, are intended to help accelerate a long-term human presence on the Moon and to develop the skills needed to operate on the surface. Ryan Stephan, acting head of the agency’s lunar base cargo lander effort, said the aim is to create a testbed for lunar base operations by ordering missions and cadencing launches quickly enough to iterate on hardware and procedures.
The three companies bring uneven track records to the new work. Astrobotic’s first Peregrine lander failed to reach the Moon in early 2024 after a propulsion leak. Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus and Athena spacecraft on the surface in 2024 and 2025 respectively, but both tipped over and completed only part of their planned science. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 in 2025 executed a fully upright soft landing and completed its objectives, remaining the only fully successful mission delivered under the program to date.
The new contracts push the program’s total roster of planned surface deliveries beyond a dozen, and agency officials said additional opportunities remain open. Among them is a proposal to send a rover derived from the engineering testbed of the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers to the lunar polar region, which the agency has provisionally referred to as PROMISE (Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-situ Exploration). Agency Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a media briefing that the hardware for such a rover largely already exists and that the agency wants to move it toward the lunar surface as part of a broader push to demonstrate exploration capabilities.
The awards land amid a broader recalibration of the agency’s Moon strategy. Earlier this year, officials indicated they would deprioritize the Gateway lunar orbital station in favor of surface infrastructure focused on the south polar region, where deposits of water ice are believed to offer potential resources for life support and rocket propellant. The revised approach aims to sustain a permanent human presence on the surface as a stepping stone toward future crewed missions to Mars, and officials have said additional solicitations for surface power, communications, and habitation elements are expected to follow.
