NASA names eight companies to $10 billion lunar delivery contract and confirms nuclear-powered PROMISE rover

NASA used a Saturday event at Kennedy Space Center to unveil a batch of Moon Base contracts and mission decisions. The headline items: a new $10 billion commercial lander contract and a nuclear-powered rover called PROMISE.

The announcements came at the MAX POWER aerospace expo and air show, which runs through Sunday, Nov. 8.

Eight companies, one $10 billion ceiling

NASA selected eight companies for the next phase of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, known as CLPS. The group: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies.

Under the new CLPS 2 contract, the companies are eligible to compete for future lunar surface delivery missions. They would manage, build and operate landers carrying NASA science, technology and infrastructure payloads to the Moon.

CLPS 2 is a 10-year, multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity master contract. Its combined maximum value is $10 billion.

That figure is a ceiling. Selection makes a company eligible to compete for missions, not guaranteed revenue.

NASA also increased the value of the current CLPS 1.0 contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to support initial Phase One Moon Base objectives. The original contract stays in place through November 2028, with an additional five-year period through November 2033 to complete awarded lunar deliveries.

Separately, NASA awarded six launch and in-space transportation task orders to American companies. They support missions including CAPSTONE 02, LCRNS and MoonFall.

PROMISE gets a ride

The most concrete news is the rover. PROMISE, short for Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping and In-Situ Exploration, is a six-wheeled, nuclear-powered vehicle. NASA says it will land at the Moon's South Pole to characterize the surface and subsurface, assess resource potential, and provide data for choosing landing sites and future infrastructure.

Blue Origin will deliver it. NASA awarded Blue Origin a $94 million base contract, with an option period worth an additional $140 million based on performance, to deliver PROMISE to the lunar South Pole using its Mark 1 lander. NASA is targeting late 2028 for the launch, with an 18-month mission planned. The rover is modeled on the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build it from a combination of spare flight components and engineering test models for those two rovers.

Administrator Jared Isaacman had floated PROMISE only as a possibility before. Now it is a program moving into development. Nuclear power lets the rover operate through the long lunar night and within permanently shadowed regions thought to harbor ice.

What NASA says

"We are building the Moon Base mission by mission," Isaacman said. "When our astronauts return to the Moon, they will arrive with the first elements of the Moon Base already waiting for them on the surface."

Moon Base Program manager Carlos García-Galán said that in the eight months since "Ignition," NASA has consolidated numerous efforts into a streamlined program. He described it as "an iterative and sustained campaign" and said NASA has been "awarding new contracts and forging new partnerships to accelerate development."

Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator for science, said the agency's science side is "getting ready to provide the ultimate interplanetary survival guide" for crews heading to the Moon and on to Mars.

The lander question

The plan depends on hardware that has not yet proven itself. Artemis II flew four astronauts around the Moon and back earlier this year. Artemis III, currently slated for early 2027, is designed to test two potential human landers: Blue Origin's Blue Moon and a version of SpaceX's Starship. Artemis IV, planned for 2028, would be the first crewed landing in more than 50 years.

NASA's Office of Inspector General has previously flagged that neither lander is proven for the job, calling it a potential roadblock to the agency's lunar ambitions.

Blue Origin and SpaceX sit on both sides of the ledger. Both are among the eight CLPS 2 selectees, and both are building the landers the crewed program depends on. Blue Origin also holds the PROMISE delivery.

That concentration is a fact of the current roster. Whether those landers perform on Artemis III's early 2027 schedule will decide how much of the 2028 timeline holds.

What comes next

The companies selected under CLPS 2 are eligible to compete for future lunar surface delivery missions. Those future awards will determine how much of the $10 billion ceiling turns into spending. The nearer test is Artemis III, still slated for early 2027.