{"id":908907,"date":"2026-05-28T13:17:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/heres-what-has-to-happen-if-nasa-wants-to-land-on-the-moon-every-month\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T13:17:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:17:57","slug":"heres-what-has-to-happen-if-nasa-wants-to-land-on-the-moon-every-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/heres-what-has-to-happen-if-nasa-wants-to-land-on-the-moon-every-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s what has to happen if NASA wants to land on the Moon every month"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing in CLPS 1.0 is this potential for multi-mission block buys,\u201d Seyffert said. \u201cSo we\u2019re looking forward to seeing that in CLPS 2.0.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Blue Origin is a player in both the CLPS and Human Landing System programs, with a pathfinder cargo lander named Endurance\u00a0<\/em>set to fly to the Moon later this year. It will help pave the way for a crew lander for NASA\u2019s use on future Artemis missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe development (of the cargo lander) is done,\u201d Seyffert said. \u201cWe have great test data. We\u2019re going to fly that later this year, and then we\u2019re going to build to print dozens of landers to help NASA achieve its goals.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Astrobotic, which failed on its first mission to the Moon and is now manufacturing a larger lander for its second try, also supports the idea of block buys.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really excited to now leverage a finished product and be able to utilize that over and over again,\u201d said Dan Hendrickson, vice president of business development at Astrobotic. \u201cOne of the challenges, I think, that we faced is the bespoke nature, sometimes, of mission to mission. If we can try to maintain some of these vehicle types over and over again, I think we\u2019ll reap the benefit of all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into getting our supply chain to be able to perform and to overcome some technical challenges that were pretty significant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Intuitive Machines\u2019 Athena lander descends toward the lunar surface on March 6, 2025. The spacecraft tipped over upon touchdown.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

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\n Intuitive Machines\u2019 Athena lander descends toward the lunar surface on March 6, 2025. The spacecraft tipped over upon touchdown.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines is planning a heavier lander after flying a smaller vehicle on its first few missions to the Moon. Its next mission, IM-3, is scheduled for launch toward the end of this year in tandem with the first node of a lunar data relay satellite constellation. Intuitive Machines aims to bounce back from its first two CLPS missions, in which the company\u2019s landers tipped over after touchdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what you will see is the lander design modifying slightly to become basically like a Model T Ford,\u201d said Ben Bussey, chief scientist at Intuitive Machines.<\/span><\/p>\n

Firefly Aerospace nailed its first attempt to land on the Moon last year. Its Blue Ghost lander returned scientific data from the lunar surface for 14 days before succumbing to the dark lunar night. Firefly\u2019s second Blue Ghost lander is slated to launch later this year, using the same basic design as the first, but accompanied by a pair of data-relay satellites to enable a landing on the far side of the Moon.<\/p>\n

Firefly is expanding its factory capacity in Texas to churn out more landers and transfer vehicles. The first voyage to the Moon with the Blue Ghost lander launched in January 2025, less than four years after NASA awarded the contract to Firefly, a \u201crecord-breaking timeline\u201d for a commercial lunar mission, said Farah Zuberi, the company\u2019s director of spacecraft mission management.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe takeaway is that with this mission, the NASA CLPS model did what it was intended to do, which was to enable reliable access to the Moon at a fraction of the cost and schedule,\u201d Zuberi said.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s now up to NASA\u2019s other CLPS providers to show they can reach the Moon, and all of them\u2014including Firefly<\/span>\u2014must prove they can do so repeatedly. NASA and its contractors must cut Firefly\u2019s four-year lead time in half to ramp up to a monthly cadence in the next two years.<\/span><\/p>\n

NASA will take a more paternalistic approach with the next round of CLPS orders. \u201cWhen you are building, we need to hear the things that are slowing you down, and we\u2019re going to try to help you with those things,\u201d Carlos Garcia-Galan, head of NASA\u2019s Moon base program, told representatives of the CLPS companies at last week\u2019s LSIC meeting.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Stephen Clark
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing in CLPS 1.0 is this potential for multi-mission block buys,\u201d Seyffert said. \u201cSo we\u2019re looking forward to seeing that in CLPS 2.0.\u201d Blue Origin is a player in both the CLPS and Human Landing System programs, with a pathfinder cargo lander named Endurance\u00a0set to fly to the Moon later this year. It<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":908908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[211,91],"tags":[5521,5583],"class_list":["post-908907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-heres","category-wants","tag-heres","tag-wants"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}