NASA Picks Bezos’ Blue Origin Over SpaceX For Key Moon Base Mission
NASA
NASA has selected Blue Origin to play a major role in the agency’s expanding Moon Base initiative, marking a significant step toward establishing a sustained human presence at the lunar South Pole.
During a Moon Base event Tuesday at NASA Headquarters in Washington, broadcast on YouTube, agency officials unveiled a series of missions, contracts and plans for lunar rovers, robotic missions, drones and commercial partnerships designed to lay the groundwork for long-term lunar operations ahead of crewed Artemis landings later this decade. All will be uncrewed, robotic missions.
Jeff Bezos On The Moon
Central to the announcement was Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander, which NASA will use for the first official Moon Base mission targeted for launch no earlier than fall 2026. The contract is worth $188 million, with an option period valued at $280.4 million for two task orders. Blue Origin has an increasingly important role in NASA’s Artemis Program — possibly at the expense of SpaceX — and Endurance has also recently completed testing with NASA.
“The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during the event. He added that NASA would “master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable.”
NASA’s accelerated timeline also reflects growing geopolitical competition in space. China has steadily expanded its lunar exploration efforts through its Chang’e program and has announced plans to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030, with ambitions to establish a lunar base by 2035. However, NASA leaders continue to frame the Moon Base initiative as preparation for future human missions to Mars.
Moon Base Missions I, II and III
NASA outlined the first three Moon Base missions, all designed to reduce operational risk and test technologies needed before astronauts begin extended lunar surface operations.
- Moon Base I in fall 2026 will send scientific instruments to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge near the lunar South Pole aboard Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander. The mission will test landing systems and study how spacecraft thrusters interact with the moon’s dusty surface — a major engineering challenge for future Artemis missions. The mission also includes a Laser Retroreflective Array designed to help orbiting spacecraft determine precise locations using reflected laser light.
- Moon Base II, targeted for later this year, will use Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic’s Griffin lander to deliver more than 1,100 pounds of cargo to the lunar surface, including Astrolab’s FLIP rover. NASA says the mission will help refine mobility systems for future crewed lunar vehicles.
- Moon Base III will carry the Lunar Vertex investigation aboard Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lander. Scientists will study unus…
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