NASA Moon Base landers set for 2028 delivery by Blue Origin, others

NASA is advancing its Moon Base initiative with progress updates from commercial partners Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, and Voyager Technologies, all working toward cargo lander deliveries by 2028. The agency released a video update on August 4, 2026, detailing the companies' hardware and flight preparations for the lunar outpost near the Moon's South Pole.

Phase I of the Moon Base architecture, running through 2029, includes more than twenty robotic landings to deploy scientific instruments, test technologies, and assemble infrastructure before astronauts arrive. These missions under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative aim to build a reliable lunar supply chain for a permanent human and robotic presence.

Blue Origin's Blue Moon MK1 lander, named Endurance, completed a thermal-vacuum test at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and is progressing through integration milestones with fully assembled structure, propulsion, and avionics. Upcoming cryogenic propellant loading will be among final tests before launch, with the mission set to demonstrate precision landing and autonomous systems.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 2 features a 22-foot-tall dual-spacecraft system with the Blue Ghost lander stacked on the Elytra orbital vehicle, nearly three times the height of the 2025 mission. Planned as the first American landing on the Moon's far side, it carries three NASA payloads to study far side geology and the cosmic Dark Ages, reusing subsystems to accelerate development.

Intuitive Machines' IM-3 mission introduces the Altus-1 lunar data-relay satellite alongside the Nova-C lander Trinity. The lander completed long-range thermal vacuum testing at NASA's Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and will deliver five NASA payloads plus six commercial and one civil payload to explore the Reiner Gamma magnetic anomaly, a lunar swirl.

Voyager Technologies' Griffin-1 lander is undergoing environmental testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, with a planned launch in late 2026. It will carry the largest commercial payload ever to the lunar surface, including five NASA payloads on the Astrolab FLIP rover, to advance surface mobility and long-duration operations.

Additionally, NASA is working with Northrop Grumman on three technology demonstration payloads using repurposed Gateway program hardware to test survive-the-night systems and shared surface power infrastructure for enduring the Moon's extreme conditions.