NASA’s permanent Moon base plans start with three missions this year

Stevie Bonifield is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.On Tuesday, NASA announced several upcoming lunar missions to the Moon’s South Pole region. These missions will pave the way for the crewed Artemis landing slated for 2028, starting with three Moon Base missions NASA says are “the first of more than a dozen missions that will be announced this year.”Moon Base I, launching “no earlier than fall 2026,” will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to bring NASA payloads to the Moon, including the Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies instrument and the Laser Retroreflective Array. NASA will use these “to study how thrusters interact with the Moon’s surface” and help “orbiting spacecraft determine a more precise location using reflected laser light.”Moon Base II, launching “later this year,” will “deliver more than 1,100 pounds of cargo on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, including Astrolab’s FLIP rover,” helping to “inform future lunar terrain vehicle, or LTV, operations.” LTVs include the new rovers astronauts will use on the Moon (more on those below). Moon Base III, “also targeted for this year,” will take a few payloads to the Moon for NASA, as well as the ESA and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. The main payload is Lunar Vertex, which will “fly on Intuitive Machine’s Nova-C Trinity lunar lander and study lunar swirls, or light spots on the surface of the Moon, to improve understanding of surface evolution and material behavior under extreme conditions.”Image: NASAIn addition to the Moon Base missions, NASA shared a few other mission updates:NASA awarded $219 million to Astrolab and $220 million to Lunar Outpost to make two new Moon rovers. It also awarded $188 million to Blue Origin to deliver the rovers to the Moon. Astrolab’s Crewed Lunar Vehicle, or CLV-1, is a “crewed rover designed to transport astronauts, carry supplies, and support remote operations.” Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus rover “is a lighter, mission‑ready evolution of its Eagle rover” that supports manual, autonomous, and remote driving. Image: NASANASA says Astrolab and Lunar Outpost will “finalize rover designs, conduct crewed evaluations, and qualify flight units for operational readiness” over the next 18 months. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has selected Firefly Aerospace to make the spacecraft that will take its four MoonFall drones to the Moon, with launch planned for 2028. After landing on the Moon, the drones will “gather high-resolution imagery of hard-to-reach terrain over the course of a single lunar day” and operate a “survive-the-night payload” for several months afterward.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Stevie Bonifield