Less than 2 months after the record-breaking orbit around the Moon of the Artemis II spacecraft, NASA has begun ordering landing ships, self-propelled vehicles and drones for a large base on the Moon.
On May 26, local time, the US space agency outlined the first phase of the plan to build a base on the Moon, awarding contracts worth hundreds of millions of USD to 4 US companies.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company will provide 2 landing ships to bring the rover to the surface of the Moon, to a location near the south pole of the Moon. These vehicles traveling on lunar terrain will be manufactured by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, the company that successfully landed on the Moon last year, will bring the first unmanned aerial vehicles to the Moon.
All of this equipment is expected to be delivered before the first Artemis astronauts set foot on the Moon as early as 2028.
In the Artemis II mission in April this year, 4 astronauts flew around the Moon, going deeper into space than the Apollo astronauts who went to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
With the Artemis III mission next year, a group of astronauts will practice pairing NASA's Orion spacecraft on Earth orbit with Moon landing craft being developed by Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
NASA aims to launch Artemis III in mid-2027, with plans to bring 2 astronauts to land on the Moon as early as 2028. The second phase of the moon base, from 2029 to the early 2030s, will begin building fixed infrastructure, including power grids.
Regarding the time when the Moon base is ready to support astronauts living for a long time in specialized settlements, it is expected to take place in the 2030s, in the 3rd phase of the Moon base construction process.
NASA's moonbase program executive director Carlos Garcia-Galan sketches the base spanning hundreds of square kilometers, with a circumference marked by the MoonFall drone placed at the corners of the base.
NASA Director Jared Isaacman said that these boundary markers are to show respect for spacecraft and equipment of other countries nearby on the Moon. The goal of the Moon base is to encourage the development of the Moon's economy while conducting scientific research and laying the foundation for a Mars exploration.
