NASA: nuclear-powered PROMISE rover and eight companies on the $10 billion CLPS 2 contract for the Moon Base

A six-wheeled rover with a nuclear power source, eight companies for lunar deliveries worth up to $10 billion, and six transport missions worth about $1.3 billion are the main elements of the package of contracts NASA announced on Saturday, November 7, 2026 for the Moon Base, the permanent presence it plans at the south pole of our natural satellite. The announcements were made at the MAX POWER air and space show at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and also include the first purchases of equipment for surface power and communications. All details are in NASA’s press release.

The PROMISE rover

The rover is called PROMISE, an acronym for a polar vehicle for observation, mapping and in-situ exploration. Thanks to its nuclear source it will be able to move during the long lunar night, as well as inside regions never lit by the Sun, where scientists estimate there is ice. With a drill it will take samples of lunar soil (regolith) from a depth of about 1 metre (3 feet), and it will carry spectrometers for the soil’s chemical composition, temperature and radiation sensors and visible-light cameras. It will also test a new-generation radiation-resistant computer and autonomous operation algorithms. Launch is planned for late 2028 and the mission will last 18 months.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California will build the rover and manage the mission. It will use spare flight parts and test models from the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars, a solution that cuts cost and development time. NASA has already examined whether this equipment withstands the harsh environment near the south pole and judged that it does. Blue Origin will carry it to the Moon with its Mark 1 lander, under a base contract of $94 million with the option of a further $140 million, depending on performance. The award widens the May 2026 mandate to deliver two lunar terrain vehicles (LTV) to the lunar surface.

CLPS 2 and the transport orders

The second big decision concerns uncrewed landers that will carry cargo. The CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) programme assigns private companies to land NASA’s scientific, technology and infrastructure payloads on the Moon with their own vehicles. For the new phase, CLPS 2, eight companies were selected, which will compete for future missions: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace, as well as Northrop Grumman Space Systems, Lockheed Martin Space, Voyager Technologies and ispace-U.S. The framework contract lasts ten years, has multiple awardees and an overall ceiling of $10 billion. At the same time, the value of the existing CLPS 1.0 contract rose from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion for the first-phase objectives of the base. That contract runs to November 2028, with a five-year extension to November 2033 to complete the deliveries already assigned.

For the route from Earth to the Moon, NASA assigned six task orders to Impulse Space, Arrow Science and Technology and Blue Origin under the VADR contract for dedicated and shared launches. The orders are worth about $1.3 billion in total, while the ten-year VADR contract has a ceiling of $5 billion. They cover three kinds of missions: the first will check communications, navigation and transfer vehicles in orbit on the route from Earth orbit to the Moon and send the CAPSTONE 02 spacecraft into deep space. The second will send a team of agile drones, such as NASA’s MoonFall, to the south pole to explore the area before astronauts arrive. The third will test navigation technologies in various orbits between Earth and the Moon. Launchers will be Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Relativity Space’s Terran R and SpaceX’s Falcon 9, while the in-space transfer vehicles will come from Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Impulse Space and Quantum Space.

Separately, SpaceX will launch communications satellites with Starship in 2028 into the space between Earth and the Moon, in a demonstration of how future lunar communications networks will be set up. The award was made by a special-mission order under an existing lunar logistics contract. We have covered the progress of the vehicles that will land people on the Moon in our report on the SLS upper stage and the 2028 landing.

On the surface, NASA will buy commercial components for miniCAST, a small tower combining solar power and communications. Energy storage went to Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin subsidiary, power generation to Redwire and wireless power transfer to Yank Technologies. The systems will be assembled and tested at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Work is expected to start within a few months and concerns components, not a complete system, for which NASA plans a separate solicitation in early 2027. The agency will also issue a targeted call through NextSTEP-3 B, to gather data missing from the base design, with small spacecraft, payloads on future flights or the purchase of data from companies.

“We are building the Moon Base mission by mission,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, adding that when astronauts return to the Moon they will find the first elements of the base already waiting for them on the surface. Programme lead Carlos García-Galán stressed that in eight months the agency has unified many separate actions into one programme and moved on to new contracts and partnerships. NASA is planning ever more demanding Artemis astronaut missions to the south pole, aiming at a permanent human presence on the Moon and then the first crewed mission to Mars. NASA also opened applications for a new astronaut class on the same day.