NASA Selects Blue Origin, Firefly, and Others for Lunar Base Construction

NASA has selected Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Firefly Aerospace, among other commercial space companies, to provide hardware support for the Trump administration's plan to establish a lunar base by 2030.

NASA has awarded Lunar Outpost and Astrolab contracts worth $220 million to develop lunar rovers capable of autonomous navigation and manned operations. Blue Origin received a single transportation contract worth $234 million to deliver these lunar rovers to the moon's surface using its Mark 1 unmanned cargo lunar lander.

Under the framework of NASA's Moonfall project, Firefly Aerospace's Elytra spacecraft will be responsible for transporting the first lunar drones, imaging the moon's surface with autonomous vehicles and mapping the base site selection. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman previously announced plans to invest over $20 billion over the next seven years to build a lunar base where astronauts can live and work. The initial construction phase of the base includes 25 launches and 21 landings, with an expected delivery of four metric tons of supplies to the moon's surface.

Space company Intuitive Machines, headquartered in Texas, saw a significant drop in its stock price due to not receiving the contract for constructing the lunar rovers this time. Although the company became the first to have a commercial spacecraft successfully land on the moon intact in 2024, their spacecraft overturned during both the March 2024 and March 2025 lunar missions, leading to the missions ending prematurely.

In order to focus resources on such core space objectives, NASA recently completed the merger and reorganization of its internal organizational structure last Friday.