Artemis Moon Base To Cover 'Hundreds Of Square Miles,' With Drones, Rovers: NASA

NASA awarded contracts exceeding $200 million each to private aerospace firms for critical lunar mobility and landing systems.

For Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTVs), Astrolab, awarded $219 million and Lunar Outpost, awarded $220 million, were selected to build solar-powered rovers capable of 10 km/h speeds and 200 km ranges with autonomous navigation. These vehicles will be delivered by Blue Origin’s Mark 1 Endurance lander.

For landing systems, Blue Origin provides the Mark 1 cargo lander (for Moon Base I) and the Mark 2 crewed lander option for Artemis IV. Astrobotic is supplying the Griffin lander for Moon Base II, while Intuitive Machines provides the Nova-C Trinity lander for Moon Base III.

For drones, NASA introduced "Moonfall," a lunar drone system designed for centimeter-scale terrain mapping and locating water ice, featuring technology to survive the moon’s extreme cold.

The initiative follows an "iterative approach" rather than immediate permanent construction, focusing on derisking through robotic missions.

"We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles, with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence on the moon," Carlos García-Galán, the manager of NASA's Moon Base program at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., said during a press conference Tuesday (May 26).

The base will be constructed over the next decade or so near the lunar south pole, which is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice. This precious resource has been accumulating for billions of years on the permanently shadowed floors of craters in the region, scientists say.

NASA didn't go into the moon base-planning process with a big footprint as a priority. Rather, it emerged naturally, as all of the envisioned elements started coming together in planners' heads.

"There's no one spot that covers all the science, all the technology, all the habitation needs of the surface, and even within the local area, you have to consider the terrain," NASA's Nujoud Merancy, chief architect of the Moon Base program, said during today's briefing.

"So, you'll have the habitats on the tops of the hills where they get sunlight," she added. "Power systems — nuclear systems — need to be a kilometer or more away for the radiation protection, so all of these things, when you start putting them together, end up sprawling a little bit more like a city as you start building it out."

And scientists and mission planners still don't know a lot about the lunar south pole, which is another reason for a settlement there to cover a lot of ground, according to García-Galán.

"We're going to want to explore different sites to really maximize the mix of scientific objectives and viability of a permanent presence," he said.

The first MoonFall batch, a set of three or four spacecraft, will launch to the moon in 2028 aboard a lander built by Firefly Aerospace, NASA announced today. (Firefly nabbed a $75 million contract for the mission, the company said.)

Those drones, or others like it, could also help mark the moon base's borders, said García-Galán.

"We're going to be able to basically put them at the corners of the areas where we think we have either key scientific objectives or we want to build up the moon base," he said.

Ars Technica's Eric Berger asked García-Galán and Administrator Isaacman, who also participated in the event, if the MoonFall drones could help delineate a keep-out zone of sorts.

"I think it's important for us to get there first," Isaacman said. "I think the idea that there are areas of great interest on the lunar surface — we do want to get there and explore them, and we also obviously want to be very mindful of the Outer Space Treaty, so that we are respectful of other nations that are putting assets on the on the lunar surface. We would expect that to be reciprocal."

Moon Base I, targeted for Fall 2026, will be the first privately funded lunar lander mission, using Blue Origin’s Mark 1 to deliver science payloads to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge.

Moon Base II mission, scheduled before the end of 2026, will use Astrobotic’s Griffin lander to deliver over 500 kg of cargo, including the Astrolab FLIP rover.

Moon Base III mission, also targeted for late 2026, will use Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander to deploy the Lunar Vertex instrument, which studies lunar swirls.

Phase One (2026–2029) involves about 25 launches and 21 landings to deliver roughly four metric tons of cargo, testing "the science of survival" and establishing initial logistics.

Administrator Isaacman emphasized that the Moon Base serves as a testing ground for Mars missions, allowing astronauts to master operations in a harsh environment while remaining four days from Earth. The base will utilize nuclear power and eventually expand to cover hundreds of square kilometers, transitioning from short-duration visits to long-term habitation using pressurized rovers as mobile habitats.