At an event at NASA Headquarters event, space agency officials unveiled the first rovers and landers headed to the future site of its planned lunar south pole outpostBy Dan Vergano edited by Lee BillingsNASA Administrator Jared Isaacman at a NASA moon base news conference on May 26, 2026. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesWASHINGTON, D.C.—On Tuesday NASA administrator Jared Isaacman and other officials unveiled the space agency’s next small steps toward its long-sought giant leap of creating a “permanent” human outpost on the moon in the 2030s. The announcement included contract awards to private companies for new crewed lunar vehicles and additional uncrewed cargo landers, as well as additional technological milestones and timelines for NASA’s planned sequence of crewed missions as part of its Artemis program.“We are moving with competence and the purpose,” said Isaacman in introductory remarks for the official “Moon Base” proceedings, a follow-up to March’s announcement revealing NASA’s overarching lunar exploration plans. “And we are really just getting started.”Taking place at the agency’s headquarters on a brightly-lit stage in front of a sizeable audience of journalists, NASA’s roll-out of its latest lunar ambitions stood in stark contrast to similar announcements from years past, which were often conveyed in obscure bureaucratic missives. This new higher-visibility approach shows just how much the space agency is seeking stronger engagement from the general public, as well as from a burgeoning U.S. space industry.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Overall, the announcements marked a sort of lunar coming-out party for Jeff Bezos’ rocket firm, Blue Origin, whose Mark 1 lunar cargo lander will ferry two missions carrying science and technology test missions to the moon’s south pole. This remote lunar region is the intended site of future Artemis astronaut landings and, of course, the much-ballyhooed moon base. Besides its Mark 1 cargo mission, Blue Origin is also supplying a crewed spacecraft, the Mark 2 lander, as an option for carrying astronauts to the moon’s surface in the Artemis IV mission targeted for 2028. The other option would be a lunar-lander variant of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle; many experts had considered the Elon Musk-owned aerospace company to be the leader in this two-way race, but uncertainty has grown about SpaceX’s prospects due to delays in Starship’s development.The U.S. moon rush accelerated in December, when a Trump administration executive order told NASA to prioritize a 2028 crewed lunar landing and establishing a lunar outpost by 2030. In response NASA turned to the private space industry to follow a $30-billion-plus plan that would end with a nuclear-powered moon base. Announced in March, the 11-year plan called for 79 launches and 73 landers to dramatically ramp up lunar infrastructure, including parts of a cancelled “Gateway” project once intended as a moon-orbiting way station.On Tuesday, NASA officials awarded contracts in excess of $200 million apiece to two private aerospace companies, Astrolab of Hawthorne, California and Lunar Outpost of Golden, Colorado, for building and delivering the first astronaut-toting lunar terrain vehicles (LTVs). These solar-powered vehicles should travel at 10 kilometers per hour with a 200-kilometer range, and are capable of autonomous navigation. If all goes well, says NASA’s Robert Pickle, who manages the LTV program, one or both companies should have their vehicles on the moon ahead of Artemis IV to help scout the surrounding terrain before and after that mission. “We are hoping to fly both of them to the moon,” Pickle says.Blue Origin will land both of the LTVs via separate missions using its Mark 1 Endurance lander, a cargo version of its lunar lander, the space agency also reported on Tuesday. The March moon base plan also turned next year’s Artemis III mission, formerly scheduled to send astronauts to the moon’s surface, into a high-stakes crewed test in Earth orbit of both SpaceX’s and Blue Origin’s lunar landing vehicles. (NASA will announce Artemis III’s four astronaut crew members on June 9 at Johnson Space Center in Houston.)So far, neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin has soft-landed anything on the moon, but that should soon change. Last week, SpaceX tested an improved version of Starship that will be the basis of its candidate lander, in a largely successful suborbital launch and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. And Blue Origin will seek to prove the mettle of its Mark 1 lander this fall, when it voyages to the moon’s south-polar Shackleton Crater on a technology demonstration mission for NASA. That mission, officially dubbed “Moon Base I” at Tuesday’s event, includes a three-dimensional camera system to observe landing effects on the lunar surface’s rocky regolith and reflective laser arrays for range finding for future landings.“We’re trying to stay humble; this is a first deep-space mission for us. But things are looking good,” says John Couluris of Blue Origins, citing recent thermal and radio communication tests of the Mark I lander. Many of the lander’s parts are identical to those of its Mark 2 lander intended for the Artemis III mission next year. “Having a successful Mark 1 mission will be a huge confidence builder,” he says.Wrapping up Tuesday’s announcements, NASA also revealed new details for “Moon Base II” and “Moon Base III” missions, each of which are planned to launch later this year as part of a broader surge in U.S. moon rovers. Moon Base II would use a different cargo lander, the Griffin lander built by U.S. firm Astrobotic, to deliver a smaller Astrolab-built FLIP rover to the lunar surface. Moon Base III would involve yet another private U.S. cargo lander, the Intuitive Machines-built Nova-C Trinity lander, transporting an international assortment of science payloads to the moon; its highlight would be the Lunar Vertex, a rover from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory meant to study bright spots on the moon called lunar swirls thought to mark regions more shielded from cosmic radiation.“We’re going to experiment on the things that we know are ahead of us that we're going to need to build a permanent infrastructure,” said NASA’s moon base chief Carlos García-Galán. That permanent infrastructure, García-Galán revealed in remarks about NASA’s plans for rocket-powered terrain-surveying lunar drones, should eventually encompass hundreds of square miles, starting with the first landings on announced on Tuesday. “Now we get to the hard part, which is delivering on time and having successful missions back to back,” García-Galán said.It’s Time to Stand Up for ScienceIf you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. 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