NASA formally announced its Moon Base back in March 2026 and has been working on several projects simultaneously to further the objective of putting people on the moon in a more permanent capacity.
On Tuesday, NASA gave reporters some updates about how that plan is coming along during a press conference and Q&A session.
The overall tone was positive as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Moon Base program manager Carlos García-Galán discussed NASA’s upcoming plans and fielded questions about whether those plans were affected by recent events, such as the untimely explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket during a ground test in late May.
The explosion caused a lot of damage to Blue Origin’s only launchpad, and there were concerns that it would set back NASA’s plans for the Moon Base since the damage would take some time to repair. Some of the Moon Base missions were set to use New Glenn as a launch vehicle.
García-Galán and Isaacman said everything was still going according to plan.
“Blue Origin’s response to the situation is almost beyond impressive,” Isaacman said. “They’re making great progress, so Plan A is still very much to launch the (Mark 1 lunar lander) on New Glenn. We have time. They’re very committed to the business of getting back to launching New Glenn before the end of the year.”
García-Galán said three lunar landers were in the advanced stages of development, including the Blue Origin Mark 1 lunar lander, the Astrobotic Griffin Lander and the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander. This was in response to reports that Blue Origin’s lunar lander was more than half a year behind schedule.
The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lander was the first commercially built lander to successfully land on the Moon.
NASA is also busy making sure that there is plenty of science done during all of these missions. The agency awarded several new contracts for various scientific instruments, including a camera array to map lunar dust displacement during landings, a retroreflector array to help guide incoming spacecraft waiting in orbit and the LETS, a spectrometer that measures the radiation environment on the moon.
It’s all part of the first phase of NASA’s Moon Base plan, which is scheduled to conclude in 2029, followed immediately by phases two and three, culminating in a permanent, long-term human presence on the moon.
Other NASA missions are on schedule, too
The Moon Base took center stage, but Isaacman and García-Galán still took time to talk about other things going on at NASA. The Artemis III mission is still on schedule. NASA selected the crew in early June and has spent the rest of the month gathering and assembling all the parts necessary to launch the mission in 2027.
Isaacman said that the goal is to get everything assembled and in what NASA calls “wet” dress rehearsals by the end of 2026, and that Artemis IV hardware was already in the beginning stages of assembly and testing.
NASA is considering repurposing the Promise Rover for use on the moon after years of being used as a troubleshooting platform for Curiosity and Perseverance.
NASA did have one surprise up its sleeve. Isaacman and García-Galán suggested that NASA may repurpose its third Mars rover as a moon rover instead.
Many people who follow science and space are familiar with the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers currently deployed on Mars. The third Rover, called Promise, is largely unknown since it is currently used as a developmental and troubleshooting platform for the other two rovers by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The goal, should NASA follow through with it, is to equip Promise with nuclear power and set it loose on the moon to collect data, much like its siblings on Mars.
“Having a nuclear RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generator) on [the moon base] allows us to go anywhere we want, regardless of the illumination,” García-Galán said. “Surviving the lunar night is one of the big challenges, and with this capability, we wouldn’t have to worry about that.”
Promise’s life to this point has been mostly testing fixes and troubleshooting techniques before they’re beamed up to Curiosity and Perseverance on Mars, but NASA says that the JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) team has enough experience to not need it anymore, which frees up Promise to do something else.
“We’ve had years of experience operating the two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we’ve got this hardware that the taxpayers have invested a lot in,” Isaacman said. “So the question was posed, what if we send it to the moon? JPL is great about these good ideas.”
The rover would add more capability and payload, and give astronauts another tool for exploring the lunar surface, especially during the lunar night. It lasts nearly two weeks, which would render any solar-powered solutions almost useless for long-term excursions.
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