CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the Artemis II's record-breaking lunar flyaround. The space agency outlined the first phase of its moon base plans on Tuesday, awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four U.S. companies.
Watch NASA's news conference in the video player above.
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. These so-called lunar terrain vehicles will be built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which landed successfully on the moon last year, will deliver the first drones to the moon.
READ MORE: NASA sets its sights on Artemis III following astronauts' historic moon flyby
All this hardware is ideally supposed to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts land on the moon, planned for as early as 2028.
NASA Moon Base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan answers questions near newly unveiled lunar base project models during a news conference on updated plans for the agency's moon base initiative for a long-term lunar presence, at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 26, 2026. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
During April's Artemis II mission, four astronauts flew around the moon, traveling deeper into space than the Apollo moon crews did during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For next year's Artemis III, another team of astronauts will practice docking NASA's Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with the lunar landers being developed for crews by Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
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NASA is targeting Artemis III for mid-2027, with a 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 the permanent infrastructure, including a power grid. As for when the base will be ready to support astronauts for extended periods in specialized permanent habitats, that's expected sometime in the 2030s, during the third phase.
READ MORE: 3 things NASA is testing for its future moon base camp
"Then we'll be able to say, 'Hey, we're permanently here and we're not giving it up,'" said NASA's moon base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan.
Garcia-Galan envisions a moon base sprawling over hundreds of square miles, with a perimeter marked by drones, dubbed MoonFall, stationed at the corners.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said these territory markers are meant to be respectful of other countries' spacecraft and equipment that might be nearby. He expects reciprocity in the matter.
The goal of the moon base is to encourage a lunar economy while conducting scientific research and laying the foundation for a Mars expedition, Isaacman stressed.
"For those waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand and we will not slow down," Isaacman said. "We are really just getting started."