NASA on Tuesday revealed it aims to announce over a dozen unmanned moon base space missions by the end of 2026, as part of its sweeping initiative to plant “humanity’s first outpost beyond Earth” on the lunar surface.
Officials said the first three moon base missions are targeted to launch before the end of 2026. The first, touted as “the first privately funded lunar lander mission in history,” is expected to launch around the fall. Around a dozen others will be detailed in the coming months, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a press briefing. Officials hailed the recently completed Artemis II mission as the foundation that served as a “comprehensive test of NASA’s capabilities,” validating plans to build a base on the moon by proving it has the fundamentals necessary to proceed with space exploration.
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“People are looking up again, believing in big things again, and paying attention to the moon again,” Isaacman said, noting his ambition to “achieve the near impossible,” by establishing “an enduring presence on another celestial body.
“What we are embarking upon is extremely challenging,” he said. “We know so little from what is a combined 80 hours of lunar astronaut EVA time across the Apollo missions half a century ago. We are leveraging the NASA playbook from the 1960s, figuring out what works and what doesn’t in this epic science of survival, because the moon base is as beautiful as it is hostile.”
What is the moon base?
Washington’s goal is to have humans on the moon before President Donald Trump leaves office in 2028.
A key step in that effort is establishing a $20 billion base on the moon. Officials say it is meant to help the science community proceed with plans to travel to Mars and push the boundaries of exploration. The newly announced initial unmanned missions will be critical to carrying out the endeavor of building the base.
“Moon Base will be home base for our Artemis crews, and will encompass long-duration stays, expanded robotic and human capabilities, and an enduring presence on the lunar surface,” Dr. Lori Glaze, who helps head Artemis, told reporters.
“Everything we tested and learned on Artemis II, the systems, the teamwork, the operational tempo feeds directly into our ability to build a sustainable foothold on the moon,” Glaze said. “With Moon Base, Artemis astronauts will stay longer, explore farther, and conduct the kinds of science that advance exploration itself, understanding how humans operate off-world, how we build infrastructure, and how we prepare for Mars.”
Moon Base Program Manager Carlos Garcia-Galan said building the base, which will likely be hundreds of square miles, would take place in several phases. The first phase has already started and is set to go through 2029, Garcia-Galan said. NASA hopes to achieve “some sort of habitation capability” in phase two by using landers and pressurized rovers, using them to work and explore the moon in the short term. “In phase two, NASA will also be building permanent infrastructure, including laying out a power grid and building up to what it takes to achieve permanent habitation,” he said, adding that the endeavor of building a moon base is “going to be extremely hard.
“Phase one, for example, will have 25 launches, 21 landings, and we’re planning to deliver about four metric tons of cargo to the surface of the moon, and we want to graduate from that to 60 metric tons to 150 by the time we get to phase three,” Garcia-Galan said.
“It dawns on us every day, how little we know of the lunar surface,” he said.
On Tuesday, Garcia-Galan announced the first contracts for private technology companies responsible for delivering and building robotic landers and hopping drones that NASA will use for unmanned missions, as well as delivery vehicles that could drive astronauts on the lunar surface and carry communications and scientific instruments in future operations.
Garcia-Galan revealed Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin as the first company tasked with conducting the robotic missions. Astrolab was also awarded a contract to build Lunar Terrain Vehicles for NASA, alongside Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which in March last year became the first private operator to make a successful moon touchdown with its Blue Ghost lander, was also awarded a contract.
“These awards are incredibly important to the next steps of phase one, because we have to be able to move around the surface and start looking and gaining the knowledge we need to build up on the moon base,” he said.
Why now?
Officials credited the recent Artemis II mission with propelling the current push for a moon base. During the 10-day mission, astronauts flew around the far side of the moon and set a record for venturing farther from Earth than any other humans. Glaze called Artemis II “a foundation that makes all of this possible,” referencing the moon base agenda.
“Artemis Two also validated … how humans, science teams, and mission operations work together in deep space,” she said. “This mission gave us real-world data about how our astronauts live, work, communicate, and adapt outside of low Earth orbit — knowledge we can’t perfectly simulate on the ground. Artemis II gave our operations and science teams the opportunity to collaborate in real time, practice integrated decision making, and refine the workflows that will guide lunar surface activities and eventually our path to Mars.
“Artemis II was not only a historic journey — it was a comprehensive test of NASA’s capabilities as we push farther from Earth,” Glaze said. “The incredible success of the Artemis II mission has taken NASA from proving what is possible to making the extraordinary routine.”
What are the benefits?
Isaacman touted the moon base as essential to setting the United States on a path to Mars.
“Number one, we want to be in an environment where we can learn the skills, so that astronauts can go and plant the stars and stripes on Mars someday,” he said.
The NASA administrator also referenced questions about NASA’s hopes to build a “lunar economy.” He conceded that NASA “can’t force a lunar economy into existence,” but expressed hope that similar ambitions will take root in the private sector, driving innovation and development as they realize the initiative’s value for industry. In the spirit of such hopes, Isaaman promised Moon Base 2 would be the “largest commercial payload delivered to the lunar surface ever.
“Having a good lunar economy developing would be a nice capability out of all this to realize,” he told reporters. “We are sending a demand signal that hopefully will reveal it. … We intend to take an iterative approach, sending a demand signal to industry for a lot of landers and rovers and tech demonstrations, and all the scientific payloads these missions can accommodate.”
“It’s extremely important to ignite an orbital and ideally a lunar economy,” he said. “I don’t believe that we are going to have that true kind of space-faring world we may have imagined as children reading science fiction books, if it’s perpetually funded by taxpayers. So it is vitally important that we figure out what generates value, either in the unique environment of microgravity or on the lunar surface in excess of the cost that it takes to go into it.”
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Isaacman hailed the initiative, including NASA’s newly unveiled “Moon Base” website, as a mission to revitalize the space industry and inspire the next generation of students.
“This website and all the associated moon-based missions will inspire students, instill curiosity, promote internships, and encourage them to work in industry as scientists, engineers, pilots, and astronauts to build hardware that will go to the moon and to control it from Houston,” he said. “Perhaps even themselves to walk on the lunar surface as they grow up and carry the fire during the golden age of exploration.”
