The Ultimate Guide to NASA’s CLPS Program: Every Mission, Lander, and 2025 Update

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A New Lunar Gold Rush: The Dawn of Commercial Moon Deliveries

A new era of lunar exploration is underway, one that looks fundamentally different from the flag-planting days of the Apollo program. At the heart of this transformation is NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, a bold and disruptive program designed to outsource the transportation of scientific and technological payloads to the Moon. Established in 2018, CLPS represents a strategic pivot for the space agency. Instead of designing, building, and operating its own robotic landers – a process that is historically slow, risk-averse, and expensive – NASA is now acting as a customer, buying end-to-end delivery services from a growing ecosystem of American companies.

This model is built on firm-fixed-price contracts, a commercial arrangement where the company agrees to deliver a service for a set price. This approach transfers a significant portion of the technical and financial risk from the U.S. taxpayer to the private sector. The companies are responsible for everything: procuring a launch vehicle, building and operating their lander, integrating NASA’s payloads, and successfully executing the mission to the lunar surface. In return, they gain a prestigious anchor customer and the freedom to sell additional space on their landers to other commercial, academic, and international clients, fostering a competitive and potentially self-sustaining lunar marketplace. The ultimate goal is to reduce the cost of reaching the Moon and dramatically increase the frequency of access, creating a regular cadence of missions that can support science and exploration.

The Artemis Connection

The CLPS program is not a standalone endeavor; it is a foundational pillar of NASA’s Artemis program, which is set to return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972 and establish a long-term, sustainable presence there. The robotic CLPS missions serve as the vanguard for human explorers. They are the scouts sent ahead to survey the terrain, prospect for resources, and test the technologies that will be essential for astronauts to live and work on the lunar surface.

Many of these missions are targeted for the Moon’s south polar region, an area of intense scientific interest. This region is thought to harbor significant deposits of water ice in its permanently shadowed craters. Water is one of the most valuable resources in space; it can be used for drinking and growing food, but it can also be broken down into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen to produce breathable air and rocket propellant. By using CLPS landers to “ground truth” the data gathered by orbiters and map these ice deposits, NASA can identify the most promising locations for future Artemis landings and resource extraction operations, a concept known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).

Beyond resource prospecting, CLPS missions carry a wide array of instruments to study the lunar environment. They measure radiation levels, analyze the composition of the lunar soil (regolith), and investigate the Moon’s tenuous atmosphere, or exosphere. They also serve as a proving ground for critical technologies like precision landing and hazard avoidance systems, advanced power generation, and autonomous operations. Each robotic delivery helps to reduce the risks for subsequent human missions, laying a groundwork of scientific knowledge and operational experience that will make the Artemis campaign safer and more productive. The program is a collaborative effort managed across NASA’s Science, Human Exploration, and Space Technology mission directorates, reflecting its central importance to the agency’s entire Moon to Mars architecture.

The “Shots on Goal” Philosophy

Underpinning the CLPS initiative is a high-risk, high-reward philosophy that stands in stark contrast to traditional, multi-billion-dollar NASA flagship missions. The agency has openly acknowledged that in this new commercial model, some missions will fail. Landing on the Moon remains an incredibly difficult technical challenge, and many of the CLPS providers are relatively new companies developing novel spacecraft on tight budgets and aggressive schedules. NASA’s approach is to spread its bets across multiple providers and missions, treating each one as a “shot on goal.” The relatively low cost of each individual contract – typically in the range of $70 million to $120 million – makes the potential loss of any single mission an acceptable risk when weighed against the program’s broader objectives.

This model is a deliberate strategy for accelerated industrial development. The early missions of 2024 provided a dramatic illustration of this philosophy in action. The first launch, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, suffered a mission-ending propulsion failure just hours after a successful launch. A month later, Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission made history with a successful landing, but a last-minute navigation problem and a hard touchdown caused the lander to tip over. In 2025, the company’s second lander, IM-2, suffered a similar fate. From a narrow perspective, these events could be seen as a string of partial failures. A deeper analysis reveals the program functioning as designed.

By using firm-fixed-price contracts with emerging companies in a nascent market, NASA incentivizes speed and cost-efficiency, which inherently increases technical risk. This is not a flaw in the program; it is a feature. The initiative is effectively paying for the industry’s real-world education in the unforgiving environment of deep space. Each anomaly and failure, while a setback for the individual company, generates invaluable data and hard-won experience that informs not only that company’s next attempt but the entire provider pool. For instance, the challenges faced by IM-1 directly led to hardware and software upgrades for the IM-2 lander. This creates an accelerated, if sometimes brutal, learning curve that would be impossible under the traditional, risk-averse NASA mission development cycle. In these early years, the program’s most important product is not just scientific data, but a hardened, experienced, and resilient commercial industrial base capable of supporting a new lunar economy.

The Architects of a Lunar Marketplace: The CLPS Providers

To build its commercial lunar delivery service, NASA first had to cultivate a pool of potential providers. The agency cast a wide net, selecting a diverse group of American companies, from established aerospace giants to ambitious startups, to be eligible to compete for mission contracts.

The Vendor Pool

The CLPS program was officially launched in November 2018 with the selection of an initial group of nine companies. This first cohort included:

• Astrobotic Technology, Inc.
• Deep Space Systems
• Draper
• Firefly Aerospace, Inc.
• Intuitive Machines, LLC
• Lockheed Martin Space
• Masten Space Systems, Inc.
• Moon Express
• Orbit Beyond

A year later, in November 2019, NASA expanded the pool by adding five more companies, bringing the total number of eligible vendors to 14. The “on-ramp” additions were:

• Blue Origin
• Ceres Robotics
• Sierra Nevada Corporation (now Sierra Space)
• SpaceX
• Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc.

This group represents a broad cross-section of the U.S. aerospace industry, each bringing different technologies, business models, and levels of experience to the table. From this pool, companies are invited to bid on specific “task orders,” which are contracts to deliver a particular suite of NASA payloads to a designated region of the Moon.

The Awardees – Profiles of the Key Players

While 14 companies are eligible to compete, a smaller group has emerged as the frontrunners, successfully securing contracts and launching missions. These are the companies actively building the spacecraft and executing the deliveries that define the CLPS program today.

• Astrobotic Technology: Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Astrobotic was one of the original nine CLPS providers and has been a long-time competitor in the commercial lunar space, tracing its roots to the Google Lunar X Prize. The company has been awarded multiple CLPS task orders and is developing two distinct lander product lines, Peregrine and Griffin, to serve different payload mass classes. It launched the program’s first mission in January 2024.
• Intuitive Machines: Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Intuitive Machines has quickly become a leader in the CLPS program. The company was founded by veterans of the space industry and achieved a major milestone by executing the first successful commercial soft landing on the Moon in February 2024 with its IM-1 mission. NASA has shown significant confidence in the company’s Nova-C lander, awarding it a total of four missions to date.
• Firefly Aerospace: Located in Cedar Park, Texas, Firefly is an end-to-end space transportation company that develops its own launch vehicles, orbital vehicles, and lunar landers. This vertical integration gives it a unique position in the market. Firefly has been awarded multiple CLPS missions for its Blue Ghost lander, including ambitious deliveries to the lunar far side that require complex orbital operations.
• Draper: A non-profit research and development organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Draper has a storied history in space exploration, having developed the guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) system for the Apollo missions. In the CLPS program, Draper acts as a prime contractor, leading a team of commercial partners. It is responsible for a complex and scientifically significant mission to land on the far side of the Moon.
• Blue Origin: Founded by Jeff Bezos, this aerospace giant from Kent, Washington, brings significant resources and heavy-lift capability to the CLPS program. Its Blue Moon lander is designed to deliver multiple tons of cargo to the lunar surface, making it a key provider for NASA’s larger payloads and future infrastructure needs, such as the delivery of large rovers.

The Volatile Market – Challenges and Consolidation

The path to building a commercial lunar marketplace has not been smooth for all participants. The high technical and financial risks have led to setbacks and a degree of industry consolidation, underscoring the challenging nature of the business.

The story of Masten Space Systems serves as a prominent example. In 2020, the Mojave, California-based company was awarded a $75.9 million contract for a mission to the lunar south pole. the company faced significant financial pressures and development challenges, ultimately filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2022. In a clear sign of market consolidation, its key rival, Astrobotic Technology, acquired Masten’s assets, including its extensive vertical takeoff and landing (VTVL) technology portfolio, for $4.5 million. The Masten CLPS mission was canceled, and its manifested payloads are being reassigned to other flights.

An even earlier cautionary tale came from OrbitBeyond. The New Jersey-based company was one of the first three awardees in May 2019. Just two months later, in July 2019, the company announced it was withdrawing from its task order, citing “internal corporate challenges” that prevented it from meeting the mission’s timeline. While OrbitBeyond technically remains an eligible CLPS provider and has since updated its lander designs, its early withdrawal highlighted the immense operational difficulties involved in executing a lunar mission from scratch.

These cases illustrate the harsh realities of the emerging lunar economy. Beyond the five companies that have secured landing contracts, several other providers in the pool, such as Ceres Robotics, Deep Space Systems, Lockheed Martin Space, Moon Express, Sierra Space, SpaceX, and Tyvak, have yet to be awarded a delivery mission. This creates a competitive funnel where only the most technically and financially robust companies are likely to succeed, gradually shaping the landscape of the commercial lunar industry.

The Workhorses: A Deep Dive into the Commercial Lunar Landers

The success of the CLPS program rests on the capabilities of the robotic spacecraft designed and built by its commercial partners. These landers are the workhorses of the new lunar economy, each with a unique design, set of technologies, and payload capacity. Their development reveals an emerging market segmentation, with different classes of landers optimized for different types of missions.

The small-class landers, like Astrobotic’s Peregrine and Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C, function like express couriers. They are designed for rapid, lower-cost delivery of smaller payloads, such as single scientific instruments or technology demonstrations. In the middle are the freight trucks: the medium-class landers like Astrobotic’s Griffin, Firefly’s Blue Ghost, and the Draper/ispace APEX 1.0. These are capable of carrying more complex suites of science instruments or small-to-medium-sized rovers. Finally, the heavy cargo freighters are represented by Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1, a large-class lander designed to deliver major infrastructure components and large, flagship-class rovers. This tiered structure allows NASA to select the most appropriate and cost-effective delivery service for each payload, optimizing its entire exploration portfolio and demonstrating the maturation of the commercial lunar market.

Astrobotic: Peregrine and Griffin

Astrobotic Technology is pursuing a two-lander strategy to address different segments of the payload market.

Peregrine is the company’s small-class lander, designed to be a versatile and relatively low-cost delivery vehicle. It stands 1.9 meters tall and 2.5 meters wide and can carry up to 120 kg of payload to the lunar surface. The lander’s structure is a stout and simple aluminum frame, with configurable decks that allow payloads to be mounted on top for a clear view of the sky or below for easy access to the lunar surface.

Its propulsion system is built around five main engines that use a hypergolic bipropellant (a fuel and oxidizer that ignite on contact). These engines perform all major maneuvers, from trajectory corrections in deep space to the final powered descent and landing. For guidance, Peregrine relies on a suite of standard sensors for cruise flight, complemented by a Doppler LiDAR and Astrobotic’s proprietary Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) system for the critical landing phase. TRN enables the lander to autonomously compare what its cameras see with onboard maps of the lunar surface, allowing it to determine its position with high precision and land safely.

Griffin is Astrobotic’s medium-class lander, a significantly larger and more capable spacecraft designed specifically to transport heavy payloads like rovers. It can deliver up to 625 kg to the lunar surface. While it shares much of its avionics and guidance technology with Peregrine, its structure and propulsion systems are scaled up for the more demanding mission. Griffin is powered by seven main hypergolic engines and features a large, flat isogrid deck designed to accommodate a dedicated payload adapter. A key feature of the Griffin design is its pair of large, deployable egress ramps, which provide a path for a rover to safely drive off the lander and onto the Moon’s surface. This lander was purpose-built to meet the needs of NASA’s now-canceled VIPER rover and continues to be a central part of the company’s strategy for delivering large commercial and scientific assets to the Moon.

Intuitive Machines: The Nova-C Lander

The Nova-C lander from Intuitive Machines is a tall, hexagonal cylinder standing 4.3 meters high and 1.6 meters in diameter, capable of delivering up to 130 kg of payload. Its design is notable for its innovative propulsion system and its heritage from previous NASA technology development projects.

The lander’s most distinctive feature is its single, gimbaled main engine, the VR900. This engine is the first of its kind to operate in deep space, using liquid oxygen and liquid methane (methalox) as propellants. Methalox is considered a “green” propellant and is highly efficient, offering performance benefits over traditional hypergolic fuels. It’s also a technology that NASA is keenly interested in for future sustainable missions, as methane and oxygen could potentially be produced on the Moon or Mars. The successful performance of the VR900 engine during the IM-1 mission was a major technological achievement.

The Nova-C’s structure is built from lightweight composite materials, and its design leverages technology from NASA’s Project Morpheus, an earlier program that tested autonomous landing and hazard avoidance systems. This heritage provided a strong foundation for the lander’s own guidance and control system, which proved its worth during the challenging landing of the IM-1 mission.

Firefly Aerospace: The Blue Ghost Lander

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander is a medium-class vehicle designed for robustness and mission flexibility. It stands 2 meters tall and 3.5 meters wide and can deliver up to 240 kg of payload to the lunar surface. A key design feature of Blue Ghost is its capability for lunar night survival. Most small solar-powered landers can only operate for a single lunar day (about 14 Earth days) before the extreme cold of the two-week-long lunar night permanently disables them. Blue Ghost is designed with enhanced thermal and power systems to endure these harsh conditions, enabling longer-duration science missions.

Firefly emphasizes vertical integration in its manufacturing process, building many of the lander’s core components – including its composite structures, thrusters, and avionics – in-house. This approach gives the company greater control over its supply chain and production schedule.

A unique aspect of Firefly’s mission architecture is the ability to pair the Blue Ghost lander with its Elytra orbital vehicle. This creates a two-stage system where the Elytra vehicle first transports the entire stack to lunar orbit. Elytra can then deploy secondary payloads, such as communications satellites, before the Blue Ghost lander separates and proceeds to the lunar surface. This dual-capability enables more complex missions that can serve both orbital and surface assets from a single launch.

Draper and ispace-U.S.: The APEX 1.0 Lander

For its CLPS mission, Draper acts as the prime contractor, reprising its historical role from the Apollo program by providing the critical guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) systems. The lander itself, named APEX 1.0, is designed and operated by its partner, ispace-U.S.

The APEX 1.0 (previously known as the SERIES-2) is a capable medium-class lander designed for high-performance missions. Standing approximately 3.5 meters tall and 4.2 meters wide, it can deliver an impressive 500 kg of payload to the lunar surface. It is engineered with the robustness required to survive the lunar night and to land on the challenging terrain of the Moon’s far side. Its propulsion system is designed for high reliability, featuring five pressure-fed main engines. This redundancy means the lander could potentially complete its landing burn even if one engine were to fail. The APEX 1.0 is the platform for the first U.S. attempt to land on the far side of the Moon, a mission that requires a high degree of autonomy and precision.

Blue Origin: The Blue Moon Lander

Blue Origin enters the CLPS market with a heavy-lift lander, the Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1). This vehicle is in a class of its own among the current CLPS providers, capable of delivering up to 3 metric tons (3,000 kg) of cargo anywhere on the lunar surface. The lander stands over 8 meters tall and is powered by a single, highly efficient BE-7 engine, which uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (hydrolox) as propellants – the same combination that powered the upper stages of the Space Shuttle and the Saturn V rocket.

The MK1 is designed as a scalable platform. It serves as the robotic precursor to the larger, human-rated Blue Moon Mark 2 lander, which Blue Origin is developing to land Artemis astronauts on the Moon. This shared architecture allows technologies and systems to be tested and proven on the uncrewed MK1 cargo missions before being incorporated into the crewed vehicle. The immense payload capacity of the Blue Moon MK1 makes it the designated delivery vehicle for NASA’s largest and most complex robotic assets, such as large rovers and future infrastructure elements for the Artemis Base Camp.

The Missions: Charting a Course to the Moon, One Delivery at a Time

The CLPS initiative is not just a collection of contracts and landers; it’s an active and ongoing campaign of missions, each with specific scientific goals and technological demonstrations. This manifest represents a new, rapid-fire approach to lunar exploration, with multiple launches planned each year to a variety of destinations across the Moon.

The Trailblazers of 2024

The inaugural year of CLPS landings was a dramatic mix of disappointment and historic achievement, perfectly encapsulating the program’s high-risk, high-reward nature.

Astrobotic Peregrine Mission One (TO2-AB): A Valiant Failure

The very first CLPS mission lifted off on January 8, 2024, aboard the much-anticipated maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander carried a diverse manifest of 21 payloads, including five NASA science instruments. The launch was flawless, but just hours into its coast toward the Moon, the spacecraft suffered a critical anomaly. A valve in the propulsion system failed to reseal after pressurization, causing a massive leak of oxidizer. The resulting thrust sent the lander tumbling, and though engineers managed to regain control, the loss of propellant made a soft lunar landing impossible.

Despite the devastating failure to reach the lunar surface, the mission was not a total loss. Astrobotic’s team operated the crippled spacecraft for ten days in cislunar space. They successfully powered on several payloads, including NASA’s Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS) and Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), which collected valuable data on the radiation and exosphere environment between the Earth and the Moon. The mission ended on January 18 with a controlled, safe reentry into Earth’s atmosphere over a remote stretch of the South Pacific. While it didn’t land, Peregrine became the first U.S. commercial lunar lander to operate in space, providing important lessons for all future missions.

Intuitive Machines IM-1 (TO2-IM): A Historic, Tilted Touchdown

Just over a month later, the CLPS program had its moment of triumph. On February 15, 2024, Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The transit to the Moon was smooth, but drama unfolded in the final hours before the landing attempt on February 22. During final checks, mission controllers discovered that the safety switch on the lander’s primary laser rangefinders had not been properly enabled before launch, rendering them inoperable. Without these lasers, the lander couldn’t measure its altitude and velocity for a safe touchdown.

In a remarkable display of ingenuity, the team on the ground implemented a last-minute software patch to reroute the lander’s flight computer. It would now use the data from one of its NASA payloads, an experimental Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL), as its primary navigation source. The improvised solution worked. Odysseussuccessfully guided itself to the surface near the Malapert A crater in the south polar region, achieving the first soft landing by a U.S. spacecraft in over 50 years and the first-ever by a private company.

The landing was not perfect. The spacecraft came in with a higher-than-expected sideways velocity, and one of its landing legs likely caught on a surface feature, causing it to tip over and come to rest on its side. The tilted orientation limited the effectiveness of its solar panels and pointed some of its antennas away from Earth. Nevertheless, the lander was alive and communicating. Over the next seven days, until the Sun set at its landing site, Odysseus transmitted valuable scientific and engineering data. All six of its NASA payloads were able to return some data, making the mission a qualified success and a landmark achievement for the commercial space industry.

The Defining Year: 2025 Missions and Updates

The year 2025 marks a significant escalation in the cadence and complexity of CLPS missions, with multiple landings that build directly on the lessons of 2024.

Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 (TO19D): The First Upright Success

Firefly Aerospace’s first lunar mission launched on January 15, 2025, on a SpaceX Falcon 9. On March 2, its Blue Ghost lander achieved a flawless, upright landing near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium. This was the second successful commercial landing and the first to touch down perfectly as intended. The lander delivered a suite of 10 NASA payloads and operated for a full lunar day (about 14 Earth days), continuing to transmit data for several hours into the frigid lunar night, exceeding its primary mission objectives.

The landing site in Mare Crisium, a 550-kilometer-wide basin formed by an ancient asteroid impact and flooded with lava, was chosen for its unique geology. Scientists believe the region’s composition differs from the Apollo landing sites, and its location is ideal for studying the complex interaction between the solar wind, the Moon’s weak crustal magnetic fields, and Earth’s magnetotail. Key payloads included the Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER), a heat-flow probe that drilled into the regolith; the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), which successfully demonstrated that GPS signals from Earth could be used for navigation at the Moon; and the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS), which captured high-resolution imagery of how the lander’s engine exhaust kicked up dust during touchdown.

Intuitive Machines IM-2 (PRIME-1): A Resource Hunt with a Familiar Stumble

The second mission from Intuitive Machines was the first CLPS delivery focused squarely on in-situ resource utilization. The Athena lander, launched on February 26, 2025, carried NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1). This payload consisted of The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) and the Mass Spectrometer for Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO). The plan was to land at Mons Mouton, a plateau near the south pole, drill up to a meter into the subsurface, and analyze the extracted material for signs of water ice.

The landing on March 6 repeated the history of IM-1. The spacecraft again tipped over, coming to rest on its side in a small crater. The orientation severely limited the power its solar panels could generate. While mission controllers were able to command the PRIME-1 instrument to extend its drill, the lander’s position prevented the drill from actually penetrating the lunar surface. The mission ended prematurely as the lander’s batteries depleted. Although the primary ISRU demonstration was not completed, the mission did deliver other payloads, including a technology demonstration for Nokia’s 4G/LTE cellular network on the Moon and a small deployable hopper.

Astrobotic Griffin Mission One (TO20A): A Story of Adaptation

Scheduled for launch in late 2025 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, Astrobotic’s second mission is a prime example of the CLPS program’s adaptability. The mission was originally awarded to deliver NASA’s flagship Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Nobile Crater region of the south pole. VIPER was a golf-cart-sized rover designed for a 100-day mission to map water ice deposits in detail.

In July 2024, facing significant cost growth and schedule delays for the rover, NASA made the difficult decision to cancel the VIPER project. instead of canceling the delivery contract, NASA modified its agreement with Astrobotic. The mission would proceed as a demonstration flight for the large Griffin lander, carrying a mass simulator in place of the rover to prove its ability to deliver a heavy payload to the challenging polar region.

In a remarkable commercial pivot, Astrobotic then signed a new agreement with the company Venturi Astrolab to fly its FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP) rover on the mission. The Griffin lander will now deliver the FLIP rover to the same Nobile region. The mission will serve its purpose as a lander demonstration for NASA while also allowing Astrolab to test its rover platform, which is designed to mature technologies for a larger commercial rover. This includes testing tires, batteries, and dust-mitigation strategies in the harsh lunar south pole environment.

Blue Origin Blue Moon MK1 Mission 1: The Heavy-Lifter’s Debut

Also planned for late 2025 is the inaugural flight of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 lander. This mission will serve as a important pathfinder for the heavy-lift vehicle. It will deliver a relatively simple set of NASA payloads to the south pole region: a Laser Retroreflector Array for precision positioning and another copy of the SCALPSS camera system to study plume-surface interactions from a much larger lander. The primary objective of this flight is to demonstrate the performance of the Blue Moon lander and its powerful BE-7 engine, validating its capabilities before it is entrusted with more complex and expensive payloads on future missions.

The Next Frontier: Missions for 2026 and Beyond

The CLPS manifest for 2026 and the following years shows a clear progression toward more complex and ambitious goals, including multiple missions to the scientifically tantalizing but operationally challenging far side of the Moon.

These far-side missions are not just about landing in a new place; they represent a strategic investment in critical lunar infrastructure. Both the Draper and Firefly missions slated for 2026 are tasked with deploying communications assets. Draper’s mission includes two dedicated relay satellites, while Firefly’s will deploy the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder orbiter. This is not a coincidence. NASA is using two separate commercial providers to begin building a redundant communications network at the Moon. This network is an essential prerequisite for any sustained exploration of the far side, which is permanently blocked from direct communication with Earth. This infrastructure will unlock an entire hemisphere of the Moon for future science, particularly for radio astronomy. The far side is a uniquely “radio quiet” environment, shielded from the constant radio frequency interference generated by Earth, making it the ideal location to build telescopes that can listen for faint signals from the early universe.

Draper CP-12 (2026): Probing the Moon’s Interior

The Draper-led mission is a science-rich expedition to Schrödinger Basin, a 320-kilometer-wide impact crater near the south pole on the far side. It is one of the best-preserved peak-ring basins on the Moon, offering a window into deep lunar geology. The mission will deliver three sophisticated NASA science suites: the Farside Seismic Suite (FSS), which will place the first seismometers ever on the lunar far side to listen for moonquakes; the Lunar Interior Temperature and Materials Suite (LITMS), which will drill into the surface to measure heat flowing from the Moon’s core; and the Lunar Surface ElectroMagnetics Experiment (LuSEE-Lite), which will study the local magnetic and electrical environment. Together, these instruments will provide a new understanding of the Moon’s internal structure and evolution.

Intuitive Machines IM-3 (CP-11) (2026): Solving a Magnetic Mystery

The third mission for Intuitive Machines will target Reiner Gamma, a strange and beautiful feature on the Moon’s near side known as a “lunar swirl.” These bright, swirling patterns in the regolith are associated with strong, localized magnetic anomalies, and their origin is a long-standing scientific puzzle. The IM-3 lander will deliver the Lunar Vertex payload, a suite of instruments on both the lander and a small rover that will map the magnetic field in detail and analyze the composition of the swirl material. The mission will also deploy NASA’s Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) technology demonstration, a team of three shoebox-sized rovers that will autonomously navigate the area and create a cooperative 3D map of the terrain.

Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 2 (CS-3) (2026): A Telescope on the Far Side

Firefly’s second mission is the other half of the 2026 far-side campaign. Using its two-stage Elytra and Blue Ghost system, the mission will first deploy ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder communications satellite in orbit. The Blue Ghost lander will then descend to the surface, carrying NASA’s Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night). This payload is a radio telescope designed to operate during the lunar night. From the radio-quiet vantage point of the far side, it will attempt to detect the faint, low-frequency signals from the “Dark Ages” of the universe, the period before the first stars formed.

Blue Origin & VIPER (2027): A Rover Resurrected

The canceled VIPER rover has been given a new lease on life. In a demonstration of the CLPS program’s flexibility, NASA has re-awarded the delivery contract to Blue Origin. The rover is now scheduled to fly in late 2027 aboard a Blue Moon MK1 lander. This move allows NASA to salvage its significant investment in the high-value science rover by pairing it with a commercial heavy-lift lander better suited to its mass and size, ensuring that its critical mission to hunt for water ice at the south pole will still be accomplished.

Future Firefly Missions (2028-2029)

Firefly has also secured contracts for two additional missions further into the future. Blue Ghost Mission 3 is slated for 2028 and will target the Gruithuisen Domes, a region of unusual volcanic formations. Blue Ghost Mission 4, planned for 2029, will head to Haworth Crater at the south pole, delivering a Canadian Space Agency rover and the MoonRanger rover, a small, fast-moving robot whose flight was originally planned for the canceled Masten mission. The re-manifesting of MoonRanger is another example of the program’s ability to reassign important payloads to ensure they eventually reach the Moon.

The Science and the Strategy: What CLPS is Teaching Us

The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is more than just a series of deliveries; it’s a multi-faceted strategy designed to rewrite the rules of lunar exploration. By enabling a rapid cadence of missions to diverse locations, CLPS is simultaneously advancing scientific knowledge, testing critical technologies, and building a new economic model for cislunar space.

Scouting for Artemis

A primary strategic function of the CLPS missions is to act as robotic scouts for the Artemis program. The data they collect directly informs planning for future human landings. The most pressing objective is the search for water ice. Missions targeted to the south pole, such as IM-2 with its PRIME-1 drill and the upcoming delivery of the VIPER rover, are designed to confirm and characterize the water ice deposits that have been detected from orbit. Understanding the location, concentration, and accessibility of this ice is essential for planning ISRU operations. The ability to “live off the land” by extracting water for life support and converting it into rocket fuel is a cornerstone of NASA’s plan for a sustainable, long-term human presence on the Moon. CLPS missions are the first step in making that vision a reality.

A New Era of Lunar Science

For decades, our direct knowledge of the Moon’s surface was limited to the handful of equatorial sites visited by the Apollo astronauts. CLPS is blowing the doors open on lunar science by enabling investigations across the entire globe. Missions are now exploring a wide range of geologic contexts. Firefly’s landing in Mare Crisium is providing new insights into the Moon’s volcanic and magnetic history. Intuitive Machines’ mission to the Reiner Gamma swirl is tackling a fundamental question about lunar magnetism. The Draper-led mission to Schrödinger Basin on the far side will place the first seismometers ever on that hemisphere, providing a completely new perspective on the Moon’s deep interior. This global access allows scientists to build a much more complete and nuanced picture of how the Moon formed and evolved.

Technology Proving Ground

The Moon provides the ultimate testing environment for the technologies needed for future deep-space exploration. The CLPS missions are serving as a important proving ground for a wide array of new systems. Advanced guidance and navigation technologies, like Astrobotic’s Terrain Relative Navigation and NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar, are being flight-tested to enable pinpoint landings in hazardous terrain. New propulsion systems, most notably Intuitive Machines’ methalox engine, are being validated for future sustainable architectures. On the surface, missions are demonstrating autonomous multi-rover operations with CADRE, advanced drilling and sample analysis with PRIME-1, and even experimental infrastructure like Nokia’s 4G/LTE communications network. Each successful technology demonstration reduces the risk for its use on more complex and costly human missions.

An Unflinching Look at the Model

As a bold experiment, the CLPS model has experienced both significant successes and notable growing pains. A 2024 report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General highlighted that many of the early task orders have faced schedule delays and cost increases. The optimistic timelines initially envisioned did not always account for the immense technical challenges of developing new spacecraft or the supply chain constraints faced by vendors. The financial fragility of the market was starkly illustrated by the bankruptcy of Masten Space Systems and the early withdrawal of OrbitBeyond.

Yet, these challenges must be weighed against the program’s undeniable achievements. In its very first year of landing attempts, the program supported two successful commercial touchdowns on the Moon – a historic first. A wealth of scientific and engineering data has already been returned, and a clear acceleration of the U.S. lunar industrial base is underway. The program has also demonstrated remarkable agility. When the flagship VIPER rover mission was jeopardized by delays, NASA was able to pivot, re-bidding the delivery contract to a different provider with a more suitable lander, thereby salvaging the high-value science asset. This ability to adapt and mitigate risks at a programmatic level is a key strength of the distributed, multi-provider model.

Summary

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of space exploration. It is an ambitious, high-risk, high-reward experiment in public-private partnership, designed to foster a vibrant commercial economy in cislunar space. The initiative trades the certainty of slow, expensive, government-led missions for the speed and innovation of a competitive marketplace.

Despite the inherent risks and early setbacks, the CLPS program has already delivered on its promise of changing the landscape of lunar access. It has enabled the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon in over half a century and the first-ever landing by a private company. A steady stream of robotic landers is now heading to scientifically diverse and previously unexplored regions of the Moon, from the resource-rich south pole to the mysterious far side. These missions are returning a wealth of data, testing the next generation of exploration technologies, and performing the critical reconnaissance needed to pave the way for the return of Artemis astronauts. The CLPS program is successfully laying the robotic groundwork for a new, sustainable era of human activity on the Moon, transforming our nearest celestial neighbor from a distant destination into a dynamic hub of science, exploration, and commerce.

Last update on 2025-12-19 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API