NASA Announces Contracts Worth Up to $10 Billion for Moon Base

Eight companies in the next CLPS phase

NASA selected eight companies for the new phase of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which delivers equipment and scientific and technology instruments to the lunar surface: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace U.S., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies.

The new contracts run for 10 years with a maximum combined value of about $10 billion. That figure is a ceiling available for competition on future missions, not funding awarded to the companies in one go. NASA also raised the ceiling of the existing CLPS contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to support the initial goals of the first phase of the lunar base project. The participating companies develop and operate lunar landers and manage payload deliveries.

PROMISE: a nuclear-powered rover

One of the headline projects is a new rover called PROMISE, short for Polar Resource Observing and Mapping Investigation... as described by the agency, a rover for exploration, monitoring and polar mapping. The six-wheeled vehicle runs on nuclear power, so it can keep working through the long lunar nights and explore permanently shadowed regions believed to hold water ice, a key resource for sustained human presence.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will manage the mission and build the rover. It will reuse spare parts and engineering models from the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, which should cut development costs and speed up testing and preparation.