By Fatima Raza  |  12 November 2026

NASA Awards $10 Billion Moon Base Delivery Framework as Eight Companies Join Lunar Race

NASA has selected eight companies — including SpaceX and Blue Origin — to compete for Moon-surface delivery missions under a new 10-year framework worth up to $10 billion, and has awarded Blue Origin a $94 million contract to deliver a nuclear-powered rover to the lunar south pole. The awards, announced on Saturday, 7 November 2026, are the biggest concrete step yet in NASA’s plan to build a permanent base on the Moon.

The announcement was made at the MAX POWER aerospace expo at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It covers the next phase of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme, known as CLPS 2, plus a nuclear-powered rover called PROMISE and six launch-service task orders worth about $1.3 billion combined.

What the $10 Billion Really Is

The headline number needs careful reading. The $10 billion is a ceiling — the maximum NASA may spend across the whole eight-company pool over ten years — not a cheque, and not money divided among the eight companies. Selection under CLPS 2 simply makes a company eligible to bid for individual delivery task orders. No specific delivery missions have been awarded under the new framework yet.

In fact, the guaranteed minimum on each base contract is just $25,000 — $200,000 across all eight companies. The real money will flow only when NASA issues task orders for particular landings. That distinction matters, because several headlines this week have presented the $10 billion as though it were already spent.

What is genuinely new is the structure: for the first time, NASA has a standing pool of eight commercial providers — from established giants Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to newer players Firefly and ispace-U.S. — competing to deliver science instruments, technology and infrastructure to the Moon’s surface. The framework will run alongside the existing CLPS contract, whose ceiling NASA has raised from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to fund the first phase of Moon Base work. That contract stays open for new orders until November 2028, with deliveries allowed until November 2033.

The Nuclear Rover: PROMISE

The most striking single item in the announcement is PROMISE — short for Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration. It is a six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover designed to explore the Moon’s south pole, where water ice sits in permanently shadowed craters.

Blue Origin won a $94 million base contract, with a further $140 million available if performance targets are met, to deliver PROMISE aboard its Mark 1 lander. The delivery is targeted for late 2028, and the mission is planned to last 18 months. The rover will carry a drill that reaches about one metre below the surface to study ice and other resources, along with spectrometers, temperature and radiation sensors, cameras, and a new radiation-tolerant computer called High Performance Spaceflight Computing.

Water ice is the key resource for a permanent base: it can be turned into drinking water, oxygen and even rocket fuel. Finding and mapping it is the first job of the scouting phase, which runs until 2029 and involves up to 21 landings of rovers, drones and scientific equipment.

Who Does What

Each of the eight companies brings something different. Blue Origin holds the named PROMISE delivery. SpaceX’s named contribution in this announcement is a Starship cislunar communications-satellite demonstration in 2028 — not a lunar delivery award, despite some reports suggesting otherwise. The other six firms — Firefly, Intuitive Machines, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Voyager Technologies — are eligible to compete for future task orders as they are issued.

Separately, NASA awarded six task orders worth about $1.3 billion combined to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space under its VADR launch-services contract, a 10-year arrangement with a maximum total value of $5 billion.

The Bigger Plan: A City on the Moon by 2032

The November 7 awards sit inside NASA’s Moon Base programme, unveiled in May 2026, which aims to build a permanent human settlement near the lunar south pole. The overall effort has previously been estimated at around $20 billion — a separate figure from the $10 billion CLPS 2 ceiling announced this month.

The plan has three phases. Until 2029, robotic rovers and flying drones scout for water ice and suitable construction sites. Between 2029 and 2032, NASA will install power stations, communication systems and early habitation modules, with some 24 landings delivering dozens of tons of cargo. From 2032, interconnected habitats are meant to support a sustained human presence, with routine crew rotations and annual cargo deliveries.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has described the base as America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another world, and as a testing ground for the first crewed mission to Mars. The base is expected to stretch across hundreds of square miles near the south pole — farther south than any Apollo astronaut ever travelled — in the region around Shackleton crater, where radar has documented significant reserves of water ice.

The schedule is ambitious and the dates are targets, not guarantees: lunar programmes have slipped before, and the plan depends on funding continuing across budget cycles. But the November 7 contracts turn a May announcement into a working procurement machine — and that is why this week matters.

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