NASA Livestream Lays Out Its Plans for a Permanent Base on the Moon

On Tuesday, NASA held a livestream offering updates on the Moon Base program. Though it didn’t reveal any groundbreaking announcements, it did provide granular updates on the timelines for individual components of the Moon Base and insight into which companies will receive the next rounds of NASA funding.

NASA’s Moon Base program manager, Carlos García-Galán, said there are three main components of the program at various stages of development.

Blue Origin’s Endurance lander

The Endurance Mk2 lander is a crewed concept competing for the privilege of carrying astronauts to the lunar surface. Interestingly, there was no mention of SpaceX in this particular area.

“I have actually already seen Endurance…and it looks like it’s almost done. As a matter of fact, I think the assembly is pretty much complete,” García-Galán said. “They’ll get through the next set of tests, then they’ll [load] the engine, load the cryos, and it’s ready to go.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket recently exploded in spectacular fashion, and NASA was forgiving in its approach to this “anomaly.” Garcia-Galan said that NASA was working with Blue Origin to help it recover and move on. After that, though, he mentioned the agency was “also looking at other options in case it doesn’t meet our timelines.”

Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission I

The second component, Griffin Mission I, aims to make a lunar lander for the Moon’s south pole.

“It’s also almost ready for complete assembly… It will undergo environmental testing, then get back to Pittsburgh, and put the engine on,” Garcia-Galan said. It’s expected to reach initial completion within the year, after which it will be loaded onto the Flip Rover, which could haul cargo and even ferry astronauts across the Moon’s surface.

Griffin Mission I is a proof of concept for the overall movement of vast amounts of building materials to the lunar south pole. If it’s successful, many more missions like it will be necessary for construction to begin.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Lander

Lastly, there was a progress update on the company Intuitive Machines, including an upgraded version of its Nova-C lander. It’s apparently progressing well, too, and under active assembly. It’s doing engine testing and demonstrating progress towards real launch tests.

A render of the Griffin lander, along with NASA’s since-cancelled VIPER lunar rover.
Credit: Astrobotic

The presentation then went into some fabrication details, with footage, so be sure to watch the event video above. Footage of construction begins around 38:30 in the broadcast.

Overall, NASA plans more than 20 missions in support of the Moon Base program, aimed to be completed before the end of 2029. It’ll test a variety of vendors and technologies, figuring out what works best and most affordably for which applications. It will also gather information about the Moon’s surface and help select a candidate site for construction.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman summed this up as “doing a lot of littles.” He went on to say that, “As you tune in and you start watching these robotic, uncrewed landings…every single time, not only is that a useful mission for the long-term goals of building out a moon base, it’s bringing down risk for when the astronauts arrive.”

“We’re learning,” he said, “and building up to doing something extremely hard.”