On November 7, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center and in the middle of Max Power (the new aerospace expo and airshow NASA hosted in Florida for America’s 250th birthday), the agency delivered its most complete update yet on the Moon Base program. On stage were NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman; Carlos García-Galán, manager of the Moon Base program; Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate; and Dana Ezzy, acting director of the program’s Utility and Infrastructure Office.
Isaacman made it clear from the start: this time it wasn’t about inspirational speeches, but about the how. And there was plenty of “how.”
Going Back to Stay
Moon Base will be built in the Moon’s south pole region and aims to become humanity’s first permanent settlement beyond Earth. The underlying idea is to turn exploration into presence: not going, planting a flag and coming home, but living, working and exploring there continuously. NASA calls it “the science of survival.”
The program kicked off in March 2026, on what the agency named Ignition Day, and it is organized in three phases. Phase one, running from now until 2028, focuses on achieving reliable access to the surface, gathering real “ground truth” data, and testing the technologies the infrastructure will need. As García-Galán put it, it’s not about one lander, it’s about the fourth, the fifth, the tenth mission.
One figure that shows the pace: between 2019 and the end of this year, the CLPS program will have awarded 22 lander task orders to the Moon, and half of them have been signed since March.
From Mission-by-Mission to a Lunar Freight Network
The big shift in philosophy is moving away from individual missions toward a campaign. In the past, if a payload ran late, the entire mission ran late. Now NASA buys rockets, orbital transfer vehicles (space “tugs”), landers and payloads separately, then matches them based on what is ready and what is a priority. One of the engineers summed it up with a smile: we need to build an “intergalactic freight network.”
Six transportation task orders were announced at the event:
- CAPSTONE 2, two Advanced Space satellites that will fly on a Falcon 9 with Quantum Space’s Ranger tug to study navigation and communications in cislunar space (around 2027–2028).
- Intuitive Machines communications satellites, which will all ride together on another Falcon 9 procured through Impulse Space instead of being spread across several missions.
- Moonfall, three JPL-built hopping drones that will fly on a Blue Origin New Glenn with Firefly’s Elytra transfer vehicle, which will drop them very close to the surface. They’ll be able to explore hard-to-reach areas, scout sites before crews arrive, and test technologies for surviving the lunar night. Target: 2028.
- Two New Glenn missions with the Blue Ring vehicle, one of which will include a Blue Origin communications demonstration.
- A mission on Relativity Space’s Terran R rocket with Impulse’s Helios vehicle, which will attempt something very ambitious: a tug that can land on the Moon itself.
In addition, SpaceX will use a Starship mission to carry Starlink satellites beyond their usual orbits and test long-range communications. The idea is that if these demos work, they can grow into commercial services for the base and for other users in cislunar space.
CLPS 2.0: Bigger Landers
The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS) is moving into its second generation. Phase two will require landers able to carry between 2 and 5 or 6 metric tons. NASA announced the eight selected companies: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace U.S., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies.
Promise: Curiosity’s Sibling Heads to the Lunar South Pole (This is my Favorite)
For me, this was the headline. It all started when Isaacman visited JPL and saw the engineering unit of Curiosity and Perseverance sitting in the “garage.” The question was simple: what if we give it a new paint job, new electronics, and send it to the Moon? The result is Promise, a rover built from spare flight parts and test hardware from the Mars rovers.
Some of the details they shared:
- It will land in late 2028 aboard a Blue Origin Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, for an 18-month prime mission.
- It is the size of a large car and will carry more than ten science instruments and technology demonstrations.
- It includes copies of four instruments from the VIPER rover: a drill that can extract regolith from up to one meter deep and three spectrometers to analyze its chemical composition. This will allow scientists to compare different areas of the south pole. It will also carry a mass spectrometer that was left without a ride after a Canadian rover was cancelled.
- It will be powered by a radioisotope generator (RTG). The fuel is plutonium processed decades ago for the Cassini mission; it has lost some of its heat output, but it’s perfect for Promise, which will mainly use the waste heat to stay warm. That will let it survive the lunar night and venture into permanently shadowed craters, where sunlight hasn’t reached in billions of years and where water ice is likely to be found.
- The estimated cost, including delivery to the surface, is under $400 million.
The project scientist will be Dr. James Keane of JPL. And for anyone worried about Curiosity and Perseverance: a team of experts concluded both missions can continue with low risk, because JPL still has other testbeds available.
Mini CAST: The First Power and Communications Tower
Dana Ezzy announced the first step toward permanent infrastructure: Mini CAST, a demonstration tower that combines solar power and communications in a single mission. It will be integrated by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with components from Honeybee Robotics (energy storage), Redwire (power generation) and Yank Technologies (wireless power transfer).
The long-term vision is beautiful: vertical solar towers rising from the sunlit ridges of the south pole, broadcasting communication and navigation signals from their tops, and rovers recharging their batteries by induction when they park on a plate on the ground. A true lunar power grid, fed by solar, nuclear or fuel cell energy, and a communications network with redundant orbital relays and wireless surface terminals for habitats, rovers and science missions. NASA would set the standards so private companies can invest knowing their equipment will be compatible.
What We Still Don’t Know (and Need to Find Out)
One of my favorite lines came from García-Galán: we have a celestial body just four days away, and yet in some areas we know less about it than about the surface of Mars. Many of the calculations rely on models that haven’t yet been anchored to real data.
One example: how far away should landers touch down so their engine plumes don’t blast the base with regolith? The current estimate is somewhere between 1 and 1.5 kilometers, but they want to refine it with instruments on many landers of different sizes. Their wish list has a clear number one: surviving the lunar night. For Isaacman, the first priority is achieving consistent soft landings; everything else flows from there.
A Collective Effort
This project is not the work of a single hand. Beyond the companies already mentioned, NASA is working with international partners such as JAXA, the European Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, and the Artemis Accords now count 78 nations. Countries that can’t build a habitat or a pressurized rover will be able to contribute instruments developed by their universities or industry. As García-Galán said, what country wouldn’t want to have something on the Moon?
As for the schedule, Isaacman reaffirmed that Artemis III will launch in 2027, and the Griffin-1 mission, carrying Astrolab’s FLIP rover, is targeting launch windows in early January.
A Message for Students and Educators
As an educator, the end of the press conference stayed with me most. A young attendee asked what he should study to help build the first moon base, and the answer was unanimous: whatever you’re passionate about. Civil engineering, materials, power, robotics, chemistry, physics, astronomy... but also communications, graphics, budgets and outreach. As Nicky Fox put it, it doesn’t take a village; it takes many cities to send these missions into space.
And a golden idea for parents and teachers: it’s science fair season, and the Moon Base architecture team publishes the “data gaps” it needs to fill on its website. What better school project than researching a real problem NASA hasn’t solved yet?
A Step Toward the Stars
Moon Base is not just a technological project: it’s a legacy that carries forward the spirit of Apollo with a different goal. This time it’s not about visiting the Moon, but about staying. As the first pieces of the base begin to take shape, I can’t help feeling that mix of excitement and pride that has been with me since my mother taught me, as a child, to look up at the sky.
Nearly sixty years ago, Neil Armstrong spoke of one small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind. Today, brick by brick, we are building the staircase.
If you’d like to follow the progress, visit nasa.gov/moonbase. The greatest journey in human history is just getting started.
