Washington, May 27 (IANS) NASA unveiled an aggressive roadmap to establish a permanent Moon Base at the lunar South Pole, awarding new contracts for lunar terrain vehicles, cargo landers and drone missions as the US space agency accelerated preparations for long-duration human presence on the Moon and eventual missions to Mars.
“The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a news conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable.”
Isaacman described the effort as part of a “Golden Age of lunar exploration”, saying NASA was building capabilities not only for the Moon but also to “master the skills needed for where we will inevitably go next…Mars.”
NASA announced three early Moon Base missions targeted before the end of 2026. The first mission, Moon Base I, will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to deliver scientific payloads to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge near the lunar South Pole.
Moon Base II will use Astrobotic’s Griffin lander to carry more than 1,100 pounds of cargo, including Astrolab’s FLIP rover, to test mobility systems for future astronaut operations on the Moon.
Moon Base III will deploy scientific payloads aboard Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lunar lander, including the Lunar Vertex investigation studying mysterious lunar swirls on the Moon’s surface.
The American space agency also announced major contracts for lunar mobility systems expected to support Artemis astronauts by 2028. Astrolab received a $219 million award, while Lunar Outpost secured a $220 million contract to build lunar terrain vehicles, or LTVs.
Astrolab’s crewed lunar vehicle, adapted from its FLEX architecture, is designed to transport astronauts and supplies across the lunar surface. Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus rover can operate manually, autonomously or through teleoperation at speeds exceeding 9 mph.
NASA officials said the rovers would allow astronauts to travel farther than during the Apollo era while also operating autonomously between crewed missions.
“We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence on the moon,” Moon Base programme executive Carlos Garcia Golan said during the briefing.
NASA also detailed “MoonFall”, a mission involving four lunar drones designed to hop across the Moon’s surface to survey future landing zones and search for water ice deposits. Firefly Aerospace was selected to build the carrier spacecraft that will transport the drones to lunar orbit.
Agency officials repeatedly stressed that the Moon Base initiative was designed as an iterative programme with heavy commercial participation rather than a single large government-led infrastructure push.
“We are digging up the playbook from the 1960s,” Isaacman said. “We are going to get back to this iterative approach of learning.”
NASA said the lunar South Pole was chosen because of its scientific importance and the possibility of water ice deposits that could eventually support human habitation and fuel production.
–IANS
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