Moon Base Cargo Landers: Griffin-1 Is NASA's Only 2026 Launch

One lander left on the 2026 manifest

NASA wants its Moon Base program to show steady, repeatable access to the lunar surface. Its latest round of updates shows something narrower. Over the past several weeks the agency and its contractors have reported progress on the commercial cargo landers meant to start building an outpost near the lunar South Pole. The near-term schedule now rests on one spacecraft: Voyager Technologies' Griffin-1, which NASA calls Moon Base II. According to NASA, it has passed its environmental tests at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is set to fly on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy later this year.1

The other landers that were supposed to fly this year have slipped. In September, NASA expected Griffin-1 to be the only Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission to launch in 2026, because Blue Origin's first Blue Moon mission and Intuitive Machines' IM-3 had both moved to 2027.31 One outlet called Griffin-1 the "last lunar lander standing." It said every other CLPS lander planned for this year has moved to 2027 or later, which makes Griffin-1 NASA's only near-term bet for the program.9 That framing is accurate. The rest of this year's Moon Base story depends on what happens to this one lander.

What the tests showed

The test campaign started in July, after the 2,789-pound (1,265-kilogram) lander was driven from Voyager Lunar Systems' plant in Pittsburgh to JPL.1 Engineers spun it to measure its mass properties and checked its electronics for interference in an anechoic chamber. They shook it in three directions on a vibration table and blasted it with up to 153 decibels of sound to simulate launch.1 The last stage was about two weeks in JPL's 25-Foot Space Simulator, where the lander was heated to 167°F (75°C) and cooled to −148°F (−100°C) in a vacuum.1

The lander has since gone back to Pittsburgh for final assembly. Launch-readiness work and shipment to Cape Canaveral come next.36 One report says the FLIP rover will be attached to the lander at Kennedy Space Center.32 Voyager has described the work as completed acceptance testing and is still targeting a late-2026 launch.

Several outlets have pointed out what the testing does not prove. Environmental qualification shows a spacecraft can survive launch and the trip to the Moon. It does not show the lander can complete a controlled descent. One outlet noted that NASA's account gave no test margins and no specific launch date.35

The cargo

NASA calls Griffin-1 an infrastructure-class lander. It is designed to deliver more than 1,100 pounds (455 kilograms) of cargo to Nobile Crater near the South Pole, carrying 10 science and technology demonstrations from six countries.1 The largest item is Astrolab's FLIP rover, which NASA describes as the largest commercial payload ever delivered to the Moon.1 FLIP weighs about 500 kilograms and can carry another 30 kilograms of payload. It is a smaller precursor to Astrolab's FLEX rover.8 NASA has said five of its payloads will ride on FLIP.3

The exact payload numbers vary between reports. One regional report puts the lander's capacity at 625 kilograms and says four NASA payloads will be on the rover.22 Another reference gives a delivered mass of about 445 kilograms.31 The differences probably reflect total capacity versus the mass actually manifested. Readers should still treat payload figures from secondary reports with some caution.

The lander was originally built for a different job. It was chosen in 2020 to carry NASA's VIPER rover, then reconfigured with other payloads after VIPER was canceled in 2024, keeping its CLPS task order.31 FLIP now fills the slot VIPER left.

When it launches

The launch date is not settled, and reports disagree on it. NASA's JPL release says only "later this year."36 Tech Times reported a target of no earlier than November from Launch Complex 39A.32 An October entry in the Griffin-1 mission reference says NASA expected a launch either before the end of 2026 or in January 2027.31 One public launch tracker currently projects December.

My reading is that a November launch looks unlikely now. The lander still has to finish final assembly in Pittsburgh, be shipped to Florida, and have the rover attached at Kennedy.32 A December launch, or a slip into January, fits both NASA's hedged wording and the remaining work. Griffin-1 has slipped before: a February report gave a July 2026 target, which later moved to the fourth quarter.22

The rest of the fleet

NASA's August Moon Base update covered four commercial partners: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, and Voyager. Each is preparing landers for delivery missions through 2028.3

• Blue Origin: Its Blue Moon MK1 lander, called Endurance, finished thermal vacuum testing at Johnson Space Center and has completed communication checks with NASA's relay and Deep Space networks. Loading cryogenic propellant is one of its last major tests before launch integration.3 It was originally designated Moon Base I, aimed at the Shackleton Connecting Ridge no earlier than fall 2026.17 That target has now moved to 2027.31
• Intuitive Machines: IM-3 will fly the company's third Nova-C lander, named Trinity, along with Altus-1, its first lunar data relay satellite.3
• Firefly: Blue Ghost Mission 2 is meant to be the first American landing on the Moon's far side. It will reuse some subsystems from Firefly's first mission.3
• Northrop Grumman: It is adapting power and avionics hardware originally built for Gateway's HALO module into surface demonstrations meant to survive the lunar night and test shared power infrastructure.3

The Northrop Grumman work reflects a wider change in NASA's plans. The hardware is being reused because NASA moved away from an orbit-centered lunar strategy toward one focused on surface operations.3 Crewed plans have changed too. Artemis III is now a 2027 test in low Earth orbit, in which Orion will rendezvous with test versions of the Blue Moon and Starship landers.10 Reuters reported that both crewed landers face delays.10

The money and the schedule

The overall plan is large. Phase One runs through 2029 and calls for up to 25 missions, including 21 landings, delivering about four metric tons of cargo. Phase Two, from 2029 to 2032, would increase deliveries to as much as 60 metric tons.15 On May 26, NASA announced awards to Astrolab ($219 million) and Lunar Outpost ($220 million) for lunar terrain vehicles. Blue Origin received a $188 million award, with a $280.4 million option, to deliver those vehicles.17 On June 30, NASA added nearly $600 million in lander awards: $297.9 million to Astrobotic for two missions, $144.2 million to Firefly, and $148.3 million to Intuitive Machines.16 NASA now plans 17 lunar surface deliveries across multiple providers.16

The track record is thinner than the spending. Tech Times counts one fully successful CLPS landing out of four attempts, Firefly's Blue Ghost in 2025.32 Other outlets describe the record more generously, saying two missions succeeded at least partly.11 Either way, the record is short. A 2024 NASA Inspector General report cited by Tech Times found that CLPS task order costs rose about 26%, and that seven of eight task orders were delayed by an average of about 14 months.32

The Voyager deal and the stakes

The company flying Griffin-1 has also changed. Voyager Technologies closed its purchase of Astrobotic on July 13 for $162 million in cash and stock, $9 million in assumed debt, and up to $129 million in earnouts. The unit has been renamed Voyager Lunar Systems.27 Astrobotic's last lander, Peregrine, had a propulsion failure after launching in January 2024 and never reached the Moon.22 Still, the company holds the largest of the June awards, which covers two more Peregrine landers.11 Financial coverage noted that Voyager reports losses and was flagged as having less than a year of cash runway.26 That gives this launch real corporate stakes as well as programmatic ones.

The bottom line

NASA's updates show real hardware progress: completed test campaigns, assembled landers, and a growing set of contracts. They also show that the Moon Base calendar has less margin than the program's messaging suggests. Phase One assumes a cargo delivery cadence that the commercial fleet has not yet shown it can deliver. Until something lands, the only 2026 entry on that schedule is a Falcon Heavy launch with no firm date.

Griffin-1's outcome will matter beyond this one mission. A successful landing would be the first proof that infrastructure-class commercial delivery works, and Astrolab says data from FLIP will feed into its full-size terrain vehicle due no earlier than 2028.13 A failure would set back a Phase One schedule that already has little slack.9 NASA has built its outpost plans on commercial landers flying regularly, and Griffin-1 is the first real test of whether that assumption holds.