NASA Awards Hundreds of Millions for First Phase of Lunar Base

NASA is already ordering landers, rovers, and drones for a sprawling moon base — and this is happening less than two months after the Artemis II's record-breaking lunar flyaround. The agency just put real money on the table to make it happen.

NASA outlined the first phase of its moon base plans, awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four U.S. companies. Think of this as the "breaking ground" moment for a construction project that just happens to be 239,000 miles away.

So who's getting the contracts? Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will provide a pair of landers to deliver moon buggies to the lunar surface, at a spot near the moon's south pole. Firefly Aerospace and other space firms are also on board to send robotic landers, rovers, and even drones to the moon as part of the Trump administration's efforts to jumpstart a lunar base before the end of the decade.

Here's what the bigger picture looks like: NASA plans to invest $20 billion over the next seven years to develop a base on the surface of the moon, aimed at enabling humans to live on the lunar surface long-term. This isn't just about planting a flag — it's about building something people can actually live and work in.

The timeline is more ambitious than you might think. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency will begin building a moon base with near-monthly robotic landings starting in 2027, with astronauts potentially living on the lunar surface for months at a time by the early 2030s. By the time Artemis IV astronauts land in 2028, "they're going to already have some infrastructure of the moon base waiting for them," Isaacman said.

The plan rolls out in three phases. For next year's Artemis III, astronauts will practice docking NASA's Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with the lunar landers being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX — and NASA is targeting that mission for mid-2027, with an actual 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 permanent infrastructure, including a power grid. As for extended stays in permanent habitats, that's expected sometime in the 2030s during the third phase.

The target location matters, too. NASA is going to a different part of the moon this time — the South Pole — where scientists believe water ice exists, with the goal of learning how to live, work, and cultivate resources like that water ice to inform future deep space exploration.

Garcia-Galan envisions a moon base sprawling over hundreds of square miles, with a perimeter marked by drones, dubbed MoonFall, stationed at the corners. It's a genuinely massive undertaking — and as NASA's moon base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan put it, "Then we'll be able to say, 'Hey, we're permanently here and we're not giving it up.'"

Why does this matter to you personally? Beyond the obvious "this is historic" angle, the race to build a moon base has real geopolitical stakes. China aims to put people on the moon by 2030 and also has plans for a lunar base. This isn't just science — it's a competition for who sets the rules for humanity's next frontier.