NASA has opened a $10 billion contract framework for cargo deliveries to the Moon, naming eight American companies eligible to compete for lunar surface missions as the agency builds toward a sustained base at the Moon's South Pole.
The agency announced the awards on Saturday at the MAX POWER aerospace expo and air show at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The centerpiece is CLPS 2, the successor to the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program: a 10-year, multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity master contract with a combined maximum value of $10 billion.
The eight companies named are Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies. Under the framework, the companies will manage, build and operate landers that carry NASA science, technology and infrastructure payloads to the lunar surface. The $10 billion figure is a ceiling for future task orders, not money already handed out.
NASA also raised the ceiling of the current CLPS 1.0 contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to fund the first phase of Moon Base work. That contract stays in place through November 2028, with five more years to complete awarded deliveries through November 2033.
The agency is also moving ahead with PROMISE, short for Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration. The six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover will land at the lunar South Pole to characterize the surface and subsurface, assess resource potential and inform landing-site selection. NASA awarded Blue Origin a $94 million base contract, with an option period worth an additional $140 million based on performance, to deliver the rover on its Mark 1 lander, targeting a late 2028 launch and an 18-month mission.
NASA also issued six task orders worth about $1.3 billion combined under its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare launch contract, covering launch and orbital transfer services, and selected SpaceX for a demonstration under an existing lunar logistics contract to deploy communications satellites aboard Starship into the region between Earth and the Moon in 2028.
The Moon Base program is NASA's effort to establish a lasting human outpost at the Moon's South Pole, building on the Artemis campaign that is to return astronauts to the Moon. The first CLPS 2 task orders will be cargo runs and technology demonstrations that de-risk landing, power and communications ahead of crewed Artemis missions to the South Pole.
