Commercial Lunar Payload Services

• 1. A Ticket to the Moon

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  Commercial Lunar Payload Services made history on the 15th of February 2024, when Intuitive Machines launched Odysseus toward the Moon. A few days later, the spacecraft set down on the lunar surface, the first private lander ever to reach it. CLPS, the NASA program behind that mission, does not design or build spacecraft. It purchases rides to the lunar surface from private companies using fixed-price contracts, then fills those spacecraft with NASA science instruments. How did commercial competition come to sit at the heart of America's return to the Moon? Who are the firms competing for those contracts? And what are those instruments actually searching for in the lunar soil? The story begins with a cancelled rover and a pivotal decision in 2018.

• 2. A Cancelled Rover's Legacy

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  When the concept study for the Resource Prospector rover was cancelled in April 2018, NASA officials announced that lunar exploration would continue. Commercial lander services would be the vehicle. That same April, NASA introduced CLPS as the first step in soliciting commercial flights to the Moon. A Draft Request for Proposal was issued immediately, and by September 2018 a formal solicitation had been published. On the 29th of November 2018, NASA named the first nine companies eligible to bid on task orders. Those contracts were structured as indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity agreements. Their combined maximum value was $2.6 billion spread across ten years. As NASA's need to send payloads arose, it would issue firm fixed-price task orders. Winning contractors would bid on each one against a defined scope of work. The agency expected them to manage every element of a mission: launch vehicles, landers, surface systems, and payload operations. NASA set a working cost assumption of one million dollars per kilogram delivered to the lunar surface. That figure, the agency noted, might be revised after actual landings provided real cost data. In February 2018, even before CLPS was formally announced, NASA had already solicited proposals for the science instruments that would one day fly on those commercial landers. Proposals for those instruments were due by November 2018 and again by the 17th of January 2019. The first lander contracts were awarded on the 31st of May 2019.

• 3. Who Got the Contracts

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  Three firms received the first CLPS lander task orders on the 31st of May 2019. Astrobotic Technology, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, won an initial award of $79.5 million for its Peregrine lander. Intuitive Machines, of Houston, Texas, received $77 million for its Nova-C spacecraft. OrbitBeyond, based in Edison, New Jersey, was awarded $97 million for its Z-01 and Z-02 landers. OrbitBeyond did not stay in the program. The company cited "internal corporate challenges" and by the 29th of July 2019, NASA had acknowledged the termination of its contract. Five months later, on the 18th of November 2019, NASA expanded the pool of companies eligible to compete for large payload deliveries. Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation, SpaceX, and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems joined the roster. On the 8th of April 2020, Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California, received a $75.9 million award. The contract called for delivering payloads to the Moon's south pole. On the 11th of June 2020, Astrobotic won a second contract, this time for its larger Griffin lander. Griffin weighs 450 kilograms and the award was worth $199.5 million. Firefly Aerospace, of Cedar Park, Texas, received roughly $93.3 million on the 4th of February 2021 for its Blue Ghost lander. Draper was awarded $73 million on the 21st of July 2022 to deliver payloads to the Moon's far side. That same month, Masten Space Systems filed for bankruptcy, and nearly all of its assets were sold to Astrobotic. Masten's contract was cancelled as a result. On the 29th of August 2024, NASA awarded an additional task order to Intuitive Machines. Its payloads include one from the European Space Agency and one from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. On the 29th of July 2025, NASA awarded Firefly a fourth task order. That mission will carry a lunar rover provided by the Canadian Space Agency.

• 4. What the Landers Carry

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  NASA announced the first twelve science payloads for CLPS missions on the 21st of February 2019. They covered a broad range of measurements. A Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer would track radiation on the lunar surface. The Neutron Spectrometer System aimed to measure hydrogen content near the surface, providing an indirect way to detect water. Navigation Doppler Lidar was designed to give landing spacecraft a more precise measure of velocity during descent and touchdown. A Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System would analyze the chemical composition of the lunar soil. Because the timeline before early flights was tight, that first batch was developed inside NASA facilities. On the 1st of July 2019, NASA revealed twelve more payloads from universities and industry. MoonRanger was among them: a 13 kilogram rover designed by Astrobotic Technology and Carnegie Mellon University. MoonRanger could drive far enough from a lander to lose radio contact, then navigate back to it on its own. Its mission was to scout polar terrain for signs of water ice and to map possible entrances to underground cave systems. A third selection, in June 2021, included the Farside Seismic Suite from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That instrument would station two seismometers on the far side of the Moon, at Schrödinger Basin, to detect deep seismic activity. In June 2022, a fourth batch introduced something unlike any previous selection. The Lunar Explorer Instrument for space biology Applications, known as LEIA, would carry living yeast of the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae to the lunar surface. LEIA's purpose was to study how that organism responds to radiation and low gravity. Neither Earth nor the International Space Station can reproduce those combined conditions. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a standard research model for understanding how cells detect and repair damaged DNA. The same fourth batch also included Lunar-VISE, a five-instrument suite aimed at the Gruithuisen Domes. That mission would investigate a rare form of lunar volcanism at either Mons Gruithuisen Gamma or Mons Gruithuisen Delta. Two of Lunar-VISE's instruments will be mounted on a stationary lander. Three will ride on a mobile rover that the CLPS contractor provides.

• 5. First Landings

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  Peregrine Mission One launched on the 8th of January 2024, carrying five NASA science payloads aboard Astrobotic Technology's lander. A propellant leak developed after launch, and no attempt to reach the lunar surface was possible. The payloads were lost. Intuitive Machines' first Nova-C lander, Odysseus, tipped significantly after setting down near Malapert-A. Six CLPS payloads were aboard, and the mission completed most of its scientific work despite the tilt. By January 2024, NASA had reported that Astrobotic's original contract for the Peregrine mission had grown from $79.5 million to $108 million. Over the same period, the planned payload count had dropped from fourteen to five. Intuitive Machines' second mission, IM-2, flew a Nova-C lander named Athena to a site called Mons Mouton. Athena tipped during landing and few meaningful scientific experiments could be performed. On the 15th of January 2025, Firefly Aerospace launched Blue Ghost Mission 1 from Earth. Built at the company's facility in Cedar Park, Texas, the spacecraft carried ten instruments for NASA. Blue Ghost touched down in Mare Crisium on the 2nd of March 2025, at approximately 3:30 in the morning Eastern Time. It was the first fully successful commercial landing on the Moon. Lunar dust was among the subjects those instruments investigated. It is angular, sticky, and sharp, difficult for machinery to handle. The same properties make it a potential health hazard for any astronauts who may one day work on the surface. Intuitive Machines' third mission, IM-3, will land at Reiner Gamma, carrying payloads including the European Space Agency's MoonLIGHT instrument.

• 6. The South Pole Prize

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  PRIME-1, a drill paired with a mass spectrometer, was designed to bore below the lunar surface and analyze whatever volatiles it found. Its mission aimed for the south pole, where permanently shadowed craters may preserve water ice accumulated over vast spans of time. Those craters have never received direct sunlight and act as natural cold traps for volatile compounds. NASA calls the extraction and use of such on-site materials "in situ resource utilization," or ISRU. Harvested water ice could supply crews with drinking water or be processed into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket propellant. That would reduce the mass that missions must launch from Earth. Nobile Crater is one of the most closely studied south polar sites. Astrobotic Technology's Griffin Mission One, scheduled for July 2026, aims to land there. That mission will also carry the FLIP rover provided by Venturi Astrolab. Blue Moon Pathfinder Mission 2, a Blue Origin flight planned for late 2027, has an opportunity to carry NASA's VIPER rover. That would bring it to the south polar surface. Intuitive Machines' fourth mission, IM-4, is also bound for the south pole, contracted for 2027. Beyond the south pole, the CLPS program has contracted missions to territory that no commercial lander has yet reached.

• 7. To the Far Side

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  Draper Laboratories received a $73 million CLPS contract on the 21st of July 2022. The mission's destination is Schrödinger Basin, on the Moon's far side. The far side never faces Earth, which means signals between a surface lander and mission controllers cannot travel in a direct line. To bridge that gap, the mission will develop and deploy two data relay satellites in lunar orbit. Draper is the prime contractor, with ispace among the companies involved in building the lander. The original lander design was called SERIES-2. On the 29th of September 2023, ispace announced that the spacecraft had been comprehensively redesigned and renamed APEX 1.0. That overhaul delayed the mission to at least 2026, and the current schedule targets 2030. Three scientific experiments are planned for Schrödinger Basin. One will gather seismic data. A second will measure heat flow and the electrical conductivity of the lunar subsurface. A third will study the electromagnetic phenomena created when the solar wind and plasma interact with the lunar surface. If successful, the mission would be the second to land on the Moon's far side. The first was China's Chang'e-4. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 2 is also headed for the far side. Contracted on the 14th of March 2023 for $112 million, it is planned for December 2026. The mission will deliver LuSEE-Night to the surface and place a separate CLMSS payload in lunar orbit. Blue Moon Pathfinder Mission 1, a Blue Origin test flight, is planned for the first quarter of 2026. The mission will use a Blue Moon Mark 1 lander launched on a New Glenn rocket. It is designed to test technologies for NASA's Human Landing System and will carry a CLPS payload. In 2026, NASA proposed a "CLPS 2.0" initiative, and the program had already been extended to accommodate larger payloads after 2025.