NASA’s robotic Moon deliveries: four attempts, one lander upright

Drawn from 19 sources: NASA (14), NASA Office of Inspector General, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Aerospace America and 2 others. About 6 minutes. Checked October 1, 2026.

Under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, CLPS, NASA does not build Moon landers for its science instruments. It buys delivery. American companies bid to carry NASA payloads to the surface, and each award covers the whole job: integrating the payloads, operating the mission, launching from Earth and landing on the Moon. The companies may sell space on the same lander to other customers.¹ NASA counts failures as part of the bargain: “With CLPS, NASA has accepted the risk that going through this innovative approach with commercial companies, that there could be some failures.”²

Four CLPS landers have now flown. One never reached the Moon, two landed and ended up leaning or on their sides, and one, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, landed upright and worked through a full lunar day. No American lander has touched down in 2026.¹⁵

CLPS landing attempts so far

1. January 8, 2024

   Peregrine (Astrobotic)⁴

   Propulsion failure after launch; never reached the Moon. Five NASA payloads.

2. February 22, 2024

   Odysseus, IM-1 (Intuitive Machines)⁵

   First commercial landing, near Malapert A in the South Pole region; came to rest leaning. Six NASA payloads.

3. March 2, 2025

   Blue Ghost Mission 1 (Firefly Aerospace)⁹

   Landed upright in Mare Crisium and operated about 14 days. Ten NASA payloads, all of which returned data.

4. March 6, 2025

   Athena, IM-2 (Intuitive Machines)¹⁰

   Landed on its side in a crater near Mons Mouton; mission ended the next day.

Buying a ride instead of building a lander

NASA admitted nine U.S. companies to CLPS in November 2018 and five more a year later.¹ The contracts are indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity agreements with a combined maximum value of $2.6 billion through November 2028. Thirteen companies are now eligible, and NASA has awarded 17 deliveries to five of them, carrying more than 60 payloads.²

The early schedule did not hold. In June 2024 NASA’s inspector general reported that CLPS missions had grown $208.2 million in cost and slipped an average of at least 14 months per task order. NASA had set aggressive delivery schedules, an average of 30 months from contract award to launch, based on overly optimistic market research that did not account for supply constraints or technical difficulty; the actual average was 44 months. Fixed prices shifted production and cost risk to small, relatively new companies, which contributed to one vendor’s bankruptcy. NASA had meant to fly low-cost, non-critical instruments first, but in 2020 it added the $433.5 million VIPER rover as the fourth task order, and the high stakes led to progressively risk-averse practices that increased costs and delayed schedules. VIPER was canceled in July 2024 and a year later added to another task order.³

$2.6B

Combined ceiling of NASA’s first CLPS contracts, through November 2028²

17

Lunar deliveries awarded to five companies, carrying more than 60 payloads²

44 months

Average time from award to launch in 2024, against 30 planned³

$208.2M

Cost growth across CLPS missions reported in June 2024³

2024: Peregrine never landed; Odysseus came down on a slope

Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission One was the first CLPS flight. After a successful launch and separation from its rocket on January 8, 2024, the spacecraft had a propulsion problem that prevented a soft landing. Astrobotic kept it on a path back toward Earth so that it would burn up safely, and after 10 days and 13 hours in space it reentered over the South Pacific on January 18. Four of its five NASA payloads powered on and collected data in flight, measuring natural radiation and chemical compounds around the lander; the fifth, a laser retroreflector, could only work on the surface.⁴

A month later Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, Odysseus, made the first commercial landing on the Moon. After a seven-day trip to lunar orbit it touched down near the crater Malapert A in the South Pole region on February 22, 2024, carrying six NASA instruments, the first new NASA science on the lunar surface in more than 50 years. Hours before landing, the company found a problem with a sensor in its navigation system and leaned on a NASA experiment, the Navigation Doppler Lidar, which measures speed, direction and altitude with laser pulses, to land precisely.⁵ Odysseus came to rest in a degraded crater about a kilometer across, on terrain sloped 12 degrees. Intuitive Machines said the lander gently leaned into the surface as it came down, which preserved its ability to send back data: more than 350 megabits by February 28.^7,6

Peregrine and Odysseus, from clean room to the Moon

1 of 6

Astrobotic’s Peregrine at the Astrotech facility near Kennedy Space Center, November 14, 2023, as the NASA insignia was installed. NASA/Isaac Watson

Peregrine launches from Cape Canaveral on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket, January 8, 2024. A propulsion problem kept it from landing. NASA/Isaac Watson

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, the vehicle that became Odysseus, before launch. Intuitive Machines, released by NASA

A Falcon 9 launches Odysseus from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A, February 15, 2024. NASA/Kim Shiflett

Odysseus photographed itself on February 22, 2024, as a landing leg took the first contact with the surface; its engine was still throttling. Intuitive Machines, released by NASA

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed Odysseus, at the arrow, from about 56 miles up on February 24, 2024. The image is 3,192 feet wide. NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

March 2025: Blue Ghost upright, Athena on its side

NASA/Frank Michaux

CLPS landing attempts by year, through September 2026²

• Landed upright
• Landed leaning or on its side
• Did not land

Show the numbers

year	Landed upright	Landed leaning or on its side	Did not land
2024	0	1	1
2025	1	1	0
2026	0	0	0

2026: no landings, and a $6 billion second round for a Moon Base

The program’s purpose changed in 2026. At its Ignition event on March 24, NASA said it would establish a Moon Base near the lunar South Pole, and that CLPS, set up to provide low-cost, risk-tolerant deliveries and to incubate a U.S. industry, would now have to increase lander capacity, reliability and the number and pace of missions.¹² The first phase of the plan, “now through 2028,” counted 25 launches and 21 landings delivering about 4,000 kilograms to the surface; a second phase from 2029 to 2033 counted 24 landings and about 60,000 kilograms, with CLPS landers growing to carry 5 metric tons.¹² By August NASA described Phase One as running through 2029 and including more than twenty robotic landings, each designed to advance the next.¹⁴

NASA launched a follow-on procurement, CLPS 2.0, to deliver payloads to the lunar surface and to lunar orbit. It allows NASA to order turnkey delivery services or to accept delivery of CLPS hardware for integration into its own missions, with more government insight and collaboration with the companies to improve reliability. With an anticipated 10-year ordering period and a 15-year execution period, it is to be capped at $6 billion.¹¹ The final request for proposals was released on May 15, 2026, with responses due June 30.¹³ NASA’s plan called for new contract awards by the end of fiscal year 2026. None had been announced by October 1; in late September NASA’s procurement page moved the planned award date to October 6.^12,17,19

Under the existing contracts NASA also opened two Moon Base task orders requiring landers with proven heritage: one to deliver payloads by the end of 2028, with a bonus for a lander that deploys a radioisotope device and sends a signal after surviving a full lunar night, and one to deliver lunar terrain vehicles to the South Pole.¹¹ In May NASA awarded the rover deliveries to Blue Origin, $188 million for two task orders with an option worth $280.4 million.¹³ On June 30 it awarded nearly $600 million for four science deliveries in late 2028, two by Astrobotic ($297.9 million) and one each by Firefly Aerospace ($144.2 million) and Intuitive Machines ($148.3 million), all on updated versions of lander designs that have already flown.¹⁸

$6B

Ceiling of CLPS 2.0, with a 10-year ordering period¹¹

21

Landings in the first Moon Base phase, in NASA’s March 2026 plan¹²

4,000 kg

Payload to the surface in that phase¹²

5 t

CLPS lander capacity NASA wants in the second phase, from 2029¹²

The next landers: Griffin-1, Endurance, Trinity and Blue Ghost 2

1. NET November 2026

   Griffin-1, Moon Base II (Voyager)¹⁵

   Voyager Technologies’ Griffin lander, built by Astrobotic, to Mons Mouton near the South Pole with Astrolab’s FLIP rover and five NASA payloads; the largest commercial payload yet sent to the Moon.

2. Early 2027

   Endurance, Moon Base I (Blue Origin)¹⁵

   Blue Moon Mark 1, waiting on New Glenn’s return to flight, to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge with NASA’s plume cameras and a laser retroreflector.

3. First quarter 2027

   Trinity, IM-3, Moon Base III (Intuitive Machines)¹⁵

   A third Nova-C to Reiner Gamma, a lunar swirl, with the Altus-1 relay satellite.

4. Later in 2027

   Blue Ghost Mission 2 (Firefly)¹⁵

   The first planned American landing on the far side, stacked on Firefly’s Elytra orbiter.

The next mission ready is Griffin-1, Astrobotic’s lander, now flown by Voyager Technologies. In August it was in environmental testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; it is to carry the largest commercial payload yet delivered to the lunar surface, with five NASA payloads mounted on Astrolab’s FLIP rover.¹⁴ In September NASA’s Moon Base manager, Carlos García-Galán, said it was the one lunar launch NASA expected in 2026, no earlier than November.¹⁵ Firefly’s second Blue Ghost, built for the far side, will ride on Firefly’s Elytra orbital spacecraft, the two forming a stack 22 feet tall, nearly three times the height of the first.¹⁴ Draper’s CLPS team will fly APEX 1.0, a lander from ispace-U.S., the U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese company ispace; only American companies hold CLPS contracts.^16,1 García-Galán described what Phase One will look like: “a scattered set of assets across hundreds of square miles.”¹⁵