NASA’s permanent Moon base plans start with three missions this year

On Tuesday, NASA announced several upcoming lunar missions to the Moon’s South Pole region. These missions will pave the way for the crewed Artemis landing slated for 2028, starting with three Moon Base missions NASA says are “the first of more than a dozen missions that will be announced this year.”

• Moon Base I, launching “no earlier than fall 2026,” will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to bring NASA payloads to the Moon, including the Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies instrument and the Laser Retroreflective Array. NASA will use these “to study how thrusters interact with the Moon’s surface” and help “orbi …

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