Astrobotic, Firefly, and Intuitive Machines win additional NASA lunar missions.
During an online presentation on June 30, officials from the American space agency announced the selection of Astrobotic Technology, Firefly Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines for uncrewed lunar landing missions scheduled for late 2028, as part of the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon.
The total value of the three contracts amounts to $590.4 million. Thus, NASA has selected three more companies to send robotic landing modules to the Moon, as part of efforts to establish a lunar base by the end of the decade, emphasizes Bloomberg.
In March, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman outlined the agency’s plans to invest over $20 billion in the next seven years to build a base on the Moon where astronauts can live and work. The project involved launching a fleet of landing modules, rovers, drones, power generators, and other essential equipment.
As reminds Reuters, all three companies have attempted uncrewed lunar landings since 2024, but only Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander – carrying the Italian instrument LuGRE (Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment) – successfully landed intact and upright on the surface in March 2025, becoming the first private company to achieve this milestone.
Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission failed in Earth orbit shortly after launch in January 2024, while Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander reached the surface the following month but tipped over, followed by another attempt in 2025 where the lander again tipped over, compromising the scientific objectives for most of its payload.
PHASE ONE OF NASA’S LUNAR BASE PROGRAM
The agreements announced yesterday by the U.S. agency are components of what Carlos García-Galán, head of NASA’s Moon Base program, called “Phase 1” of a plan to build a permanent lunar settlement where astronauts will live and work. This initial phase is expected to last until 2028 and cost about $10 billion.
The Moon Base plan is integrated into NASA’s Artemis program. With the Artemis II mission in April, the agency sent a crew of four astronauts into orbit around the Moon to test the equipment that will be used to land humans on the lunar surface as early as 2028.
Additionally, last month NASA announced other agreements as part of the first phase of the Moon Base program, including the renaming of three previously contracted missions as specific missions for the “Lunar Base.” In May, the agency also awarded further contracts – worth over $1 billion in total – for building lunar surface vehicles and deploying drones on the Moon, useful for mapping the location of a lunar base, possibly as early as 2028.
Phases 2 and 3 – which involve building the first pressurized habitats on the Moon and installing power generators – outline NASA’s vision to continue developing its lunar base in the 2030s, highlights CNN. The ultimate goal is for astronauts to live and work in “semi-permanent” settlements.
“Phase 1, that is, reliably reaching the surface, is a central element,” García-Galán said during a conversation with Isaacman hosted by the space agency. “We need to conduct many tests in different locations to be able to say we have achieved the goal, because we will install very high-value instruments on these landers,” he added.
THE LATEST CONTRACTS AWARDED TO THE THREE COMPANIES
Specifically, Astrobotic received orders for two flights of its Peregrine lander, totaling $297.9 million. The Pittsburgh-based company, specialized in lunar landers and currently being acquired by Voyager Technologies, will send a lander to the Moon by the end of this year or early 2027. It will be an updated version of the Peregrine lander, whose 2024 mission ended unsuccessfully.
Firefly was awarded a contract for its Blue Ghost lander worth $144.2 million. Intuitive Machines secured an order for its Nova-C lander valued at $148.3 million.
AS THE RACE TO THE MOON WITH CHINA ACCELERATES
NASA chief Isaacman, who redesigned the architecture of NASA’s Artemis program last February, foresees a series of robotic and crewed lunar missions that will help the U.S. private sector gain experience in lunar landing before establishing a permanent human presence.
All this is part of the space agency’s plan to compete with China, which aims to land its astronauts on the Moon by 2030, in a race against the Artemis program.
Over the past thirty years, Beijing has significantly expanded its space program, investing billions of dollars to close the gap with the United States, Russia, and Europe. In 2019, Beijing achieved a world first by landing the Chang’e-4 probe on the far side of the Moon. Two years later, in 2021, China landed a rover on Mars.
Moreover, it is Isaacman himself who suggested that the next humans to walk on the Moon might be Chinese. Speaking at the Ascend conference on space technologies in Washington at the end of May, the NASA administrator stated: “The next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the Moon, probably in 2027, it will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power capable of sending humans into the lunar environment.”
