NASA picks eight companies for Moon Base lander deals worth up to $10B

As of 9:28 p.m. ET, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026

NASA has selected eight companies to compete for robotic cargo deliveries to the Moon under a new contract with a combined maximum value of $10 billion, part of a package of awards for its planned Moon Base at the lunar South Pole, the agency said.

NASA announced the awards Saturday, Nov. 7, at an aerospace expo and air show at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They also include a nuclear-powered rover called PROMISE and a Starship launch of communications satellites in 2028.

"We are building the Moon Base mission by mission," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the release. "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."

Eight companies for lunar deliveries

The companies chosen for the second phase of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, known as CLPS 2, are Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies, according to NASA. The agency said they are eligible to compete for future missions in which they would build and operate landers carrying NASA payloads to the Moon.

NASA described CLPS 2 as a 10-year, multiple-award master contract. It also said it had raised the value of the original CLPS contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to support the first phase of the Moon Base.

A nuclear-powered rover built from Mars spares

PROMISE, short for Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration, is a six-wheeled rover that NASA said can operate through long lunar nights and in permanently shadowed regions thought to hold ice. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build it from spare flight parts and engineering test models for the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, a step the agency said significantly reduces cost and shortens the timeline.

The rover will carry a drill to sample material from about 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface, along with spectrometers, sensors and cameras, according to NASA. The agency is targeting a late 2028 launch and an 18-month mission. NASA said it awarded Blue Origin a $94 million base contract, with an option worth an additional $140 million based on performance, to deliver the rover on its Mark 1 lander.

Starship test and other awards

NASA said SpaceX will launch communications satellites aboard a Starship to cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon, in 2028 as a demonstration for future lunar communications networks.

The agency also awarded six launch and transport task orders worth about $1.3 billion combined to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space. It picked Honeybee Robotics, Redwire and Yank Technologies to supply power components for a combined communications and solar tower on the Moon's surface, according to the release.