“What we’re seeing in CLPS 1.0 is this potential for multi-mission block buys,” Seyffert said. “So we’re looking forward to seeing that in CLPS 2.0.”
Blue Origin is a player in both the CLPS and Human Landing System programs, with a pathfinder cargo lander named Endurance set to fly to the Moon later this year. It will help pave the way for a crew lander for NASA’s use on future Artemis missions.
“The development (of the cargo lander) is done,” Seyffert said. “We have great test data. We’re going to fly that later this year, and then we’re going to build to print dozens of landers to help NASA achieve its goals.”
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.
“I’m really excited to now leverage a finished product and be able to utilize that over and over again,” said Dan Hendrickson, vice president of business development at Astrobotic. “One 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’ll 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.”
Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander descends toward the lunar surface on March 6, 2025. The spacecraft tipped over upon touchdown.
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’s landers tipped over after touchdown.
“I think what you will see is the lander design modifying slightly to become basically like a Model T Ford,” said Ben Bussey, chief scientist at Intuitive Machines.
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’s 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.
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 “record-breaking timeline” for a commercial lunar mission, said Farah Zuberi, the company’s director of spacecraft mission management.
“The 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,” Zuberi said.
It’s now up to NASA’s other CLPS providers to show they can reach the Moon, and all of them—including Firefly—must prove they can do so repeatedly. NASA and its contractors must cut Firefly’s four-year lead time in half to ramp up to a monthly cadence in the next two years.
NASA will take a more paternalistic approach with the next round of CLPS orders. “When you are building, we need to hear the things that are slowing you down, and we’re going to try to help you with those things,” Carlos Garcia-Galan, head of NASA’s Moon base program, told representatives of the CLPS companies at last week’s LSIC meeting.
