NASA lays out moon base plans with landers and buggies
Less than two months after Artemis II’s record-breaking moon flight, NASA is ordering landers, rovers and drones for an expanding moon base.
The space agency announced the first phase of its moon base plans on Tuesday, awarding contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to four US companies.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will deliver a pair of landers near the moon’s south pole to deliver moon buggies to the lunar surface.
These vehicles, called lunar landers, will be built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which successfully landed on the moon last year, will deliver the first drones to the moon.
All of this hardware is ideally expected to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts set foot on the moon as early as 2028.
During the Artemis II mission in April, four astronauts flew around the moon and traveled deeper than the Apollo lunar crews did in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
For next year’s Artemis III, another team of astronauts will practice putting NASA’s Orion capsule into orbit around the earth with lunar landers developed for Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX teams.
NASA is targeting Artemis III for mid-2027, with two astronauts expected to land as soon as 2028.
The second phase of the lunar base, from 2029 to the early 2030s, will begin building out permanent infrastructure, including the electrical grid.
As for when the base will be ready to support astronauts for extended periods of time in dedicated permanent living quarters, that’s expected to be in phase three in the 2030s.
“Then we’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, we’re here to stay and we’re not giving it up,'” said Carlos Garcia-Galan, NASA’s moon base program manager.
Garcia-Galan envisions a lunar base called MoonFall, spread over an area of hundreds of square kilometers, marked with drones around the perimeter, placed in corners.
These zone markers must be respectful of other countries’ spacecraft and equipment that may be nearby, Isaacman said. Reciprocity awaits in this regard.
Isaacman emphasized that the purpose of the lunar base is to promote the lunar economy while conducting scientific research and laying the foundation for the Mars expedition.
“For those who wait patiently, the big return is around the corner and we will not slow down,” Isaacman said.
“We’re really just getting started.”
