{"id":88215,"date":"2026-05-27T01:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T01:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/88215\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T01:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T01:43:10","slug":"nasas-moon-base-plans-include-landers-buggies-and-drones-for-2028-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/88215\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s moon base plans include landers, buggies and drones for 2028 mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the\u00a0Artemis II’s record-breaking lunar flyaround<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The space agency outlined the\u00a0first phase of its moon base plans<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday, awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four U.S. companies.<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin<\/a> will provide a pair of landers to deliver moon buggies to the lunar surface, at\u00a0a spot near the moon’s south pole<\/a>. These so-called lunar terrain vehicles will be built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which landed successfully on the moon<\/a> last year, will deliver the first drones to the moon.<\/p>\n

\"ap1983398647639317.jpg<\/p>\n

This rendering shows Astrolab’s CLV-1 rover on the lunar surface. NASA selected Astrolab as one of two providers of a crewed lunar rover for the Artemis program.<\/p>\n

Astrolab\/ via AP photos<\/p>\n

All this hardware is ideally supposed to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts land on the moon, planned for as early as 2028.<\/p>\n

During\u00a0April’s Artemis II mission<\/a>, four astronauts flew around the moon, traveling deeper into space than the Apollo moon crews did during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For next year’s Artemis III, another team of astronauts will practice docking NASA’s Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with the lunar landers being developed for crews by Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.<\/p>\n

The Artemis III test flight with one or two lander dockings in Earth orbit is similar in concept to Apollo 9, which launched a command module and lander to Earth orbit for flight tests in 1969 and helped pave the way to the\u00a0Apollo 11<\/a>\u00a0landing four months later.<\/p>\n

NASA is targeting Artemis III for mid-2027, with a landing by two astronauts following as soon as 2028. The moon base’s second phase, from 2029 into the early 2030s, will start building up the permanent infrastructure, including a power grid. As for when the base will be ready to support astronauts for extended periods in specialized permanent habitats, that’s expected sometime in the 2030s, during the third phase.<\/p>\n

“Then we’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, we’re permanently here and we’re not giving it up,'” said NASA’s moon base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan.<\/p>\n

Garcia-Galan envisions a moon base sprawling over hundreds of square miles, with a perimeter marked by drones, dubbed MoonFall, stationed at the corners.<\/p>\n

Isaacman said these territory markers are meant to be respectful of other countries’ spacecraft and equipment that might be nearby. He expects reciprocity in the matter.<\/p>\n

The goal of the moon base is to encourage a lunar economy while conducting scientific research and laying the foundation for a Mars expedition, Isaacman stressed.<\/p>\n

The Planetary Society, a space advocacy organization co-founded by the late astronomer Carl Sagan, estimates NASA will have spent about $107 billion on return-to-the-moon plans through 2026 in inflation-adjusted dollars, CBS News previously reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said earlier this year that NASA is expected to invest approximately $20 billion<\/a> over the next seven years into the moon base mission.<\/p>\n

“For those waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand and we will not slow down,” Isaacman said Tuesday. “We are really just getting started.”<\/p>\n

\n Go deeper with The Free Press\n <\/p>\n

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