Blue Origin Wins First of Three Uncrewed Moon Missions as NASA Lays Out Lunar Base Plans

NASA has tapped Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to lead the first of three uncrewed lunar missions planned for 2026, part of a broader push to build a permanent base on the moon. The announcement came Tuesday at a press conference in Washington, D.C., where NASA Administrator Bill Nelson outlined the agency’s roadmap for what he called “an enduring lunar presence.”

Nelson said the three missions this year will be followed by more than a dozen additional flights over the next several years to test systems and equipment. He credited last month’s successful Artemis II mission—which sent four astronauts around the moon for the first time since 1972—as both a catalyst and an incentive to accelerate the base plan. “People are looking up again, believing in big things again, and paying attention as America returns to the moon, and this time to stay,” Nelson said.

Blue Origin was awarded $230.4 million to support its first two missions, though the company will largely fund the operations itself. Its Endurance lander, a cryogenically propelled cargo vehicle, will carry scientific payloads from NASA and private partners to the Shackleton de Gerlache Ridge area near the moon’s south pole. Nelson described it as “the first privately funded lunar lander mission in history.”

The selection puts Blue Origin ahead of SpaceX in the race to support NASA’s Artemis program. Both companies are competing to provide crew landers for future missions, including the planned 2028 return of humans to the moon on Artemis IV. NASA will evaluate SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander during next year’s Artemis III test mission in low Earth orbit before making a final decision.

Blue Origin recently suffered a setback when a payload from its New Glenn rocket ended up in the wrong orbit, but the FAA cleared it to return to flight last week. Both companies have built large facilities near Cape Canaveral’s Kennedy Space Center to support crewed and cargo missions.

NASA also announced smaller contracts with Lunar Outpost, which is developing lunar rovers, and Firefly Aerospace, which is working on its Blue Ghost lander. The agency’s moon base website, launched Wednesday, projects an “operating capability” between 2029 and 2032, with a semi-permanent presence following in 2032 or beyond.

The moon base project aligns with President Donald Trump’s national space policy, which directs NASA to accelerate Artemis, establish a habitable lunar base, and develop a nuclear space reactor. Nelson said partnerships with private operators will reduce costs and create thousands of jobs. “We go for the technology, the science, and all that we will learn to make life better here on Earth,” he added.