Three major unmanned missions will pave the way beginning in late 2026.
Concrete work toward humanity’s first moon base will begin around the lunar south pole this year, NASA leadership announced on May 26.
Beginning this fall and continuing through the end of the year, three unmanned missions will venture to Shackleton Crater, the area of the moon targeted for the first human landing since 1972.
These are the first of more than two dozen missions planned across the next three years, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts awarded to private companies.
Utilizing a variety of landers, rovers, scientific payloads, and cutting-edge robotic technologies, NASA is set to commence serious scouting of the place it picked to host humanity’s first home beyond Earth.
Here’s what to know.
Moon Base Missions
Moon Base I will launch this fall. Blue Origin’s uncrewed Blue Moon MK-1 lunar lander, Endurance, will land at a strategic location near Shackleton Crater, paving the way for human landings, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said.
Endurance will be equipped with special cameras to study how much dust is kicked up by the thrusters, and a laser array to help orbiting spacecraft more accurately locate spacecraft on the surface.
This will be the first mission for Blue Origin’s lander, which is already relatively far along in its development, completing a series of tests at Johnson Space Center in Houston this year.
A successful unmanned mission of the lander technology is a crucial prerequisite for for any lander to be chosen by NASA to return humans to the surface of the moon.
Moon Base II will launch in late 2026 and deliver the largest payload to date to the lunar surface. A lander built by the company Astrobotic will deliver more than 1,100 pounds of cargo, including a lunar rover built by the company Astrolab, marking the first test of year-round rover technology that must do much more than simply carry astronauts across the surface.
“We need them to be on the surface, doing things that basically prospect the surface, scope around to potential landing sites, or go to areas of deep scientific objectives,” Program Executive Carlos Garcia-Galan said.
Moon Base III is also slated to launch before the end of 2026 and serve as the first international mission. A lander built by Intuitive Machines will carry a NASA payload designed to study how the lunar surface changes in the harsh environment of space. It will also carry payloads from the European Space Agency and the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute.
By T.J. Muscaro
