NASA Moon Base Missions Await Launch as Starship Reaches Orbit

Three missions named, none yet on the pad

NASA named its first three robotic Moon Base missions in May and said all of them would launch before the end of 2026. In mid-October, none has a firm launch window. The plan has also grown since May: there are new science payloads, more commercial contracts and a large briefing on Artemis set for later this month. The schedule promised in the spring, though, has started to come apart.

Administrator Jared Isaacman presented the three missions at a news conference at NASA Headquarters on May 26. He described the work as the start of a permanent American presence on the Moon, saying "this time to stay."6 Moon Base I will use Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to carry NASA payloads to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge near the lunar south pole. Those payloads include a camera system that will study how engine plumes interact with the lunar soil, and a laser retroreflector array.7 Moon Base II will fly on Astrobotic's Griffin lander with more than 1,100 pounds of cargo, including an Astrolab rover meant to test mobility systems ahead of the crewed terrain vehicles.7 Moon Base III will carry Lunar Vertex, the first investigation chosen under NASA's PRISM program, on Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander to study the bright "lunar swirls." It will also carry payloads from ESA and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.7

Coverage at the time agreed on the main facts but differed in some details. Fox News called the rover on Moon Base II Astrolab's FLEX.6 NASA's own release named it FLIP.7 NBC News said the cargo was "more than 1,000 pounds."10 That roughly matches NASA's figure, so it isn't a real disagreement. Coverage also differed on the drone mission. NBC described Firefly Aerospace as building the four MoonFall drones.10 NASA's account says the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is designing the drones and Firefly is building the spacecraft that will carry them from Earth orbit to the Moon.7 The NASA version is the one to rely on.

The Fox headline said NASA was racing to build a permanent lunar base "by end of 2026."6 That reading has stuck around, and it is wrong. Only the three robotic missions were aimed at 2026. Under the phases NASA presented, robotic scouting runs through 2029, semipermanent facilities follow from 2029 to 2032, and a sustained human presence starts in 2032.10

The timeline problem

The 2026 launch targets now look hard to meet. In October, Astronomy reported that all three missions were originally aimed at 2026 but that NASA had not released firm launch windows.20 Orlando station WESH reported that the first Moon Base launch is not expected before December 2026, and that NASA still has no specific date.4 In May, NASA said Moon Base I would launch "no earlier than fall 2026" and the other two "later this year."7 A December earliest date means any delay at all pushes at least part of the trio into 2027.

This matters because the first phase depends on a high flight rate. NASA's Moon Base program manager, Carlos García-Galán, said Phase One calls for 25 launches, 21 landings and about four metric tons of cargo on the surface.10 One analyst quoted by WESH described NASA's goal as close to one robotic mission a month.4 If the program can't fly three missions in its first seven months, that pace looks optimistic. This is analysis, not something NASA has said, but the gap between the plan and what has flown is now the key thing to watch.

Money, contracts and a growing list of payloads

Funding hasn't been the bottleneck. Isaacman has described Moon Base as a $20 billion investment over about seven years.10 Spaceflight Now added up the May awards at close to $1 billion.3 They include about $219 million for Astrolab and $220 million for Lunar Outpost to build crewed lunar terrain vehicles. Blue Origin received $188 million to deliver those rovers, with an option worth $280.4 million.7 Firefly received a $75 million JPL subcontract for the MoonFall transport spacecraft, which is aimed at 2028.37

NASA has kept adding to the list since then. NASA's Moon Base page says the agency picked three companies on June 30 to fly four lunar landings in late 2028. It also says NASA announced a CAPSTONE 02 navigation and rendezvous demonstration in July.11 In early October came three new PRISM investigations, which drew wide coverage. LEMS-SP is an autonomous station near the south pole that will track micrometeoroid impacts, gases in the Moon's thin atmosphere and moonquakes. GIMLI will study whether the Marius Hills Pit leads into a lava tube that could shelter astronauts. DISCO will make the first measurements from the surface of ice in micro-cold traps, and will also study how landing exhaust disturbs the ground.2 Science chief Nicky Fox called the effort an "interplanetary survival guide."2

Reporting on these picks agrees on the science and on how important they are. It also agrees that NASA hasn't given launch dates for any of the three payloads.15 The cave mission got the most attention. The Marius Hills opening measures about 65 by 90 meters, according to Astronomy.20 Even so, the three selections are a list of instruments waiting for rides to the Moon. That points to the same constraint as the delayed Moon Base missions: commercial landers have to be ready to fly. NASA also added Blue Origin's New Glenn to its list of approved launch vehicles for missions through June 2030.17 That gives the agency more choices, but no rockets are flying sooner as a result.

Starship moves from risk toward possibility

The robotic missions set the pace of base-building. Crewed landings depend on SpaceX's Starship. The most important development this fall was Flight 14 in September, when Starship reached orbit on its first try.28 Scientific American called it a largely successful test that could ease one of the biggest uncertainties in NASA's lunar plans and lend credibility to an Artemis design that has drawn criticism.24

The coverage agrees that reaching orbit doesn't clear the hardest hurdle. SpaceX still has to show it can transfer large amounts of super-cold propellant from one ship to another in orbit. Without that, the HLS lander can't be refueled to reach the Moon.28 A demonstration of that transfer was once planned for 2025, along with a NASA design certification review. As of September 2026, neither had taken place.21 Estimates of how many tanker flights a crewed landing needs still vary widely. Earlier SpaceX statements put the number at ten, while other analyses say at least 15 or "in the high teens."2527

That explains how Artemis has been reshaped. In February 2026, NASA turned Artemis III from a landing into a crewed docking test in low Earth orbit, set for late 2027, with test versions of both Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.26 The first landing moved to Artemis IV in 2028, with base construction expected to start on Artemis V in late 2028.12 Scientific American linked those changes partly to a NASA inspector general finding earlier this year that Starship HLS was behind schedule.24 Before that, NASA had moved in October 2025 to reopen part of the lander work to competitors because of Starship delays.21

What to watch next

The next checkpoint is close. NASA has scheduled an update on landing American astronauts on the Moon by 2028 for October 23 at Kennedy Space Center.5 Isaacman, Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons will take part. NASA has framed the event around "Artemis acceleration" and the status of Artemis III.1

The crewed program does have some momentum. Artemis II flew four astronauts around the Moon in April.12 NASA released more than 800 gigabytes of lunar science data from that flight in early October.8 In my reading, though, the story has changed since May. The question in the spring was whether NASA had a credible plan for a lunar base. NASA has answered that with contracts, phases and payloads. The question now is whether commercial companies can turn that plan into launches on time. So far, the robotic program has a list of payloads with no launch dates, and Starship has reached orbit but hasn't shown it can refuel there. Moon Base only becomes real once both are flying regularly, and neither is yet.