NASA has opened the door for eight companies to compete for up to $10 billion in contracts to deliver cargo to the Moon, as the agency builds toward a permanent base at the lunar south pole.
The agency announced the plan on Saturday at the MAX POWER aerospace expo at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The new Commercial Lunar Payload Services framework, known as CLPS 2, runs for 10 years and covers delivery of science equipment, technology and infrastructure to the surface.
The $10 billion figure is a ceiling for future task orders, NASA said, not money already awarded. The eight companies named were SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems and Voyager Technologies.
NASA also raised the ceiling on its existing CLPS contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to fund the first phase of the Moon base work. That contract runs through November 2028, with five more years to complete deliveries already awarded.
Alongside the framework, Blue Origin won a $94 million base contract to deliver NASA’s nuclear powered PROMISE rover to the lunar south pole, with a further $140 million available through a performance based option. NASA is targeting a late 2028 launch for the six wheeled rover and an 18 month mission.
NASA issued six more task orders worth about $1.3 billion combined for launch and in space transport services. Launches will use Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Relativity Space’s Terran R and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX also won a separate demonstration to send communications satellites aboard its Starship rocket into cislunar space in 2028.
“We are building the Moon Base mission by mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.
Source: New York Post
