NASA lays out moon base plans with landers, buggies and drones at the top of the list

NASA is ordering landers, rovers, and drones for a moon base less than two months after Artemis II’s lunar flyaround. NASA awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four U.S. companies for the first phase. Blue Origin will provide two landers to deliver lunar terrain vehicles to a site near the moon’s south pole, with vehicles built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace will deliver the first drones to the moon. Hardware is intended to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts land as early as 2028. Artemis III targets mid-2027 for landing by two astronauts in 2028. A second phase from 2029 into the early 2030s will build permanent infrastructure, including a power grid, while extended-stay habitats are expected in the 2030s. NASA envisions a base spanning hundreds of square miles with drone perimeter markers called MoonFall.

"NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the Artemis II's record-breaking lunar flyaround. The space agency outlined the first phase of its moon base plans on Tuesday, awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four U.S. companies. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will provide a pair of landers to deliver moon buggies to the lunar surface, at a spot near the moon's south pole."

"These so-called lunar terrain vehicles will be built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which landed successfully on the moon last year, will deliver the first drones to the moon. All this hardware is ideally supposed to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts land on the moon, planned for as early as 2028. During April's Artemis II mission, four astronauts flew around the moon, traveling deeper into space than the Apollo moon crews did during the late 1960s and early 1970s."

"For next year's Artemis III, another team of astronauts will practice docking NASA's Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with the lunar landers being developed for crews by Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX. NASA is targeting Artemis III for mid-2027, with a landing by two astronauts following as soon as 2028. The moon base's second phase, from 2029 into the early 2030s, will start building up the permanent infrastructure, including a power grid."

"As for when the base will be ready to support astronauts for extended periods in specialized permanent habitats, that's expected sometime in the 2030s, during the third phase. "Then we'll be able to say, 'Hey, we're permanently here and we're not giving it up,'" said NASA's moon base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan. Garcia-Galan envisions a moon base sprawling over hundreds of square miles, with a perimeter marked by drones, dubbed MoonFall, stationed at the corners."

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