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FeatureSpace businessNovember 8, 2026

NASA Picks Eight Companies to Carry Cargo to Its Moon Base

For the next ten years, eight American companies can bid to fly NASA's cargo to the Moon, under a contract that can grow to $10 billion. Who made the list, what that number really means, and what has to fly before any of it counts.

NASA artist's concept of the Moon Base near the lunar South Pole. White habitat modules, small rovers and tall towers stand on a bright crater floor, ringed by dark shadowed ridges, under a black sky with a thin crescent and the Sun low on the horizon. An illustration, not a photograph.

By Boggle Riley · Photo: NASA (artist's concept)

Published November 8, 2026. Facts as of that day. Some details may have changed since.

On Saturday, November 7, 2026, NASA named the eight American companies that may compete to fly its cargo to the Moon for the next ten years: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies.

The program is called CLPS, short for Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and this is its second round, CLPS 2. NASA announced it at the MAX POWER aerospace expo and air show at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on the same stage as a nuclear-powered Moon rover, about $1.3 billion in launch and space-transport orders, and the first parts for a power tower on the lunar surface. A 94-second video on NASA's YouTube channel framed the goal plainly: more deliveries to the Moon, more often, to build the Moon Base.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman put the approach in one line: "We are building the Moon Base mission by mission."

What CLPS is

NASA used to build its own Moon landers. With CLPS it buys the ride instead. A company designs, builds, launches and lands the lander, and NASA pays to have its instruments delivered, the way you pay a shipping company to move a package without owning the truck.

The first round started in 2018, when NASA picked nine companies, and five more joined in 2019. NASA's CLPS page, not yet updated for Saturday's news, counts 17 deliveries awarded to five companies, carrying more than 60 NASA instruments.

What $10 billion means, and what it does not

The headline number is $10 billion. It is worth slowing down on.

CLPS 2 is what the government calls an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract. It runs ten years and has eight winners, and $10 billion is the most NASA can spend through it across all eight combined. It is a ceiling, not a check. Being on the list pays a company nothing by itself. It lets the company bid each time NASA has a specific delivery to buy, called a task order, and the money arrives one mission at a time, to whoever wins that mission.

NASA also raised the ceiling on the first round, from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion, to pay for the first phase of the Moon Base. That contract takes new orders through November 2028, and companies have until November 2033 to fly the deliveries already ordered under it.

The second round is built to be more flexible. NASA said in May that under CLPS 2 it can order a delivery done start to finish, as before, or take delivery of a company's hardware and build it into a mission of its own.

Who is on the list

SpaceDew follows all eight companies:

  • Blue Origin builds the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. On Saturday it also won the job of delivering NASA's new PROMISE rover, below, and it already holds orders to land two lunar terrain vehicles and NASA's VIPER rover.
  • Firefly Aerospace flew Blue Ghost Mission 1 in 2025, the first CLPS landing to go fully as planned. It is also building the spacecraft that will carry NASA's MoonFall drones to the Moon.
  • Intuitive Machines made the first commercial Moon landing, IM-1, in February 2024. Its next mission, IM-3, is headed for a strange bright swirl on the Moon called Reiner Gamma.
  • ispace-U.S. is the American arm of Japan's ispace. Its APEX 1.0 lander was the vehicle for a first-round order led by Draper, to the far side of the Moon. Wikipedia's record says that order was cancelled by agreement with NASA in July 2026; NASA's own pages do not say so yet.
  • Lockheed Martin Space was one of the original nine in 2018.
  • Northrop Grumman Space Systems is new to CLPS. It is not among the first-round companies on NASA's provider list.
  • SpaceX joined CLPS in 2019. Separately, NASA picked it on Saturday to launch communications satellites toward the Moon on a Starship in 2028.
  • Voyager Technologies, best known for its Starlab space station plans, bought Astrobotic, the Pittsburgh lander company, and closed the deal in July 2026. That puts Astrobotic's Griffin lander under Voyager's name. NASA now calls it Voyager's Griffin-1, and it passed its launch and space-environment tests at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory this year.

So Astrobotic, one of the first-round regulars, is not missing from CLPS 2. It is on the list as part of Voyager.

Landing on the Moon is hard

NASA's own CLPS page says it in five words: "Landing on the Moon is hard." The agency accepted from the start that some of these missions would fail.

Four CLPS landers have flown so far:

  • Peregrine Mission One (Astrobotic, January 2024): a propellant leak ended any chance of landing.
  • IM-1 (Intuitive Machines, February 2024): landed, but tipped over, which cut the mission short. It still did most of its science.
  • Blue Ghost Mission 1 (Firefly, launched January 2025): landed upright and did everything it set out to do.
  • IM-2 (Intuitive Machines, February 2025): tipped during landing and did little of its planned science.

One full success in four. As of November 8, Wikipedia's record of the program shows no CLPS lander launched since IM-2.

That is the backdrop for a bigger list. NASA's stated reason is more frequent deliveries. A bigger pool also means one company's failure, or one company's delay, does not stop the deliveries.

The rest of Saturday's news

A nuclear-powered rover. NASA is going ahead with PROMISE, the Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration. The six-wheeled rover will work at the Moon's South Pole, and its nuclear power lets it keep going through the long lunar night, about two weeks on Earth's clock, and into permanently shadowed craters, where ice is thought to hide. It will carry a drill that reaches about 3 feet (1 meter) down, plus spectrometers, cameras and temperature and radiation sensors. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build it from spare parts and test models left over from the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, which NASA says saves money and time. Launch is targeted for late 2028, for an 18-month mission. Blue Origin gets $94 million to deliver it on a Mark 1 lander, with an option worth $140 million more based on performance.

Getting cargo across space. NASA awarded six orders, worth about $1.3 billion combined, to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space. They cover moving cargo from Earth orbit out to the Moon, the long-haul trucking leg before a lander makes the final drop. The rockets named are Blue Origin's New Glenn, Relativity Space's Terran R and SpaceX's Falcon 9. The orders include flights for NASA's CAPSTONE 02 spacecraft and its MoonFall scouting drones.

Starship as a satellite truck. SpaceX will launch communications satellites toward the Moon on a Starship in 2028, a test for the network that will keep astronauts, mission control and the Moon Base talking.

Power on the surface. NASA will buy parts for a small power and communications tower called miniCAST: energy storage from Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company; power generation from Redwire; and wireless power transfer from Yank Technologies. Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will put it together. A separate call for complete power systems is expected in early 2027.

What it means for the road to Mars

On SpaceDew's Dew Point ladder, one rung is exactly this: cargo landers flying to the Moon on a schedule. It is still in progress, and Saturday did not move it. A contract is permission to bid. What moves the rung is landers lifting off on a regular basis, and landing.

NASA puts the first phase of the Moon Base, robotic landings and technology tests at the South Pole, between now and 2029. The landers to watch next are already built or close: Voyager's Griffin-1, which NASA said in October would launch on a Falcon Heavy later this year; Blue Origin's first Mark 1, carrying the first Moon Base mission; and Intuitive Machines' IM-3. First flights slip. Wikipedia's mission record now lists all three for early 2027. Then comes the first order placed under CLPS 2 itself.

CLPS 2 at a glance

  • Announced: November 7, 2026, at Kennedy Space Center
  • Companies: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX, Voyager Technologies
  • Length: ten years
  • Ceiling: $10 billion across all eight, spent one task order at a time
  • First round: ceiling raised from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion; new orders through November 2028, deliveries through November 2033
  • Track record so far: four CLPS landers flown, one full success

Sources

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