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11/11/2026

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By Dan Robitzski

If you didn't read the news over the weekend, you may have missed a flurry of moon mission announcements and awards from NASA.

NASA announced at a briefing this past Saturday that it had awarded six task orders to companies to transport lunar landers and orbiters. And separately, it announced the companies selected for CLPS 2.0, making them eligible to bid on future task orders for lunar landers. All in all, the news offered clarity into NASA's vision for commercial moon missions over the next few years, and especially into which companies will be ferrying them. Here's what you might have missed:

Transportation task orders

NASA said it awarded a combined $1.3 billion in task orders through its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) program though it didn't say how much each individual award was worth. As SpaceNews' Jeff Foust reported, these differ from the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contracts that sent private companies' spacecraft to the moon in recent years. Under CLPS contracts, companies are required to arrange their own rides to the moon. In these new awards, there's flexibility built in to potentially combine payloads, landers and transportation service.

These are the recipients:

Blue Origin: Three task orders

Blue Origin received orders for three New Glenn flights. One will carry MoonFall, a set of "hopper" spacecraft being developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will be delivered by a Firefly Elytra spacecraft. The other two orders will transport Blue Origin's Blue Ring orbital transfer vehicle.

SpaceX: Two task orders

SpaceX received two orders for Falcon 9 launches. One will carry a Quantum Space orbital transfer vehicle which will in turn bring CAPSTONE 02 to the moon, where the satellite pair will test rendezvous and proximity operations. The other order will launch another orbital transfer vehicle from Impulse Space with a set of lunar communications satellites developed by Intuitive Machines.

Relativity Space: One task order

Relativity Space received an order for a Terran R rocket, which a Helios orbital transfer vehicle from Impulse Space. NASA has not yet assigned payloads for the flight, but Impulse Space will attempt a landing using a lander the company previously announced it was developing.

CLPS 2.0

NASA selected six companies for the next iteration of CLPS, which will involve transporting larger lunar landers to the moon than under the previous CLPS round.

NASA said it selected Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace U.S., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies for CLPS 2.0. Three of the CLPS 2.0 companies — Firefly, Intuitive Machines and Voyager — have launched lunar landers under CLPS so far, while Blue Origin has several CLPS task orders for its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. Lockheed Martin and SpaceX are also part of the CLPS contract but have not won any task orders to date.

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$730 million

The amount CesiumAstro raised in a Series D fundraising round to pay for work on its 737-satellite Synchronicity constellation.

Image of the moon taken by Anduril-216’s three imaging sensors Credit: Anduril

CHINA'S CISLUNAR ALLIANCE

NASA isn't the only agency taking new aim at the moon.

China is recruiting international partners for a new constellation of cislunar satellites planned for a 2030 launch. The Cislunar CubeSat Constellation (C3) would involve 34 satellites – 30 standardized cubesats and four larger satellites that would scan the moon for resources.

C3 was first established in 2025 and has served since then as a vehicle for China to establish and strengthen international partnerships in Asia, Africa and Europe, while building projects around Chinese space infrastructure. Prominent partners named thus far include Thailand, Serbia, Egypt, Senegal, Indonesia, the Egyptian Space Agency, the Senegalese space agency, Indonesia’s BRIN, Malaysia’s UiTM Microwave Research Institute and Nigeria’s Phemotron Systems.

Angela Stanzel, a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told SpaceNews correspondent Andrew Jones that C3 will prove useful for China's diplomatic and scientific goals in space. Here's some of his story on the international project:

“C3 gets Beijing international standing, scientific legitimacy and a wider network of relationships in a strategically important new domain,” [Stanzer] said.

She said the mix of partners suits that purpose. Thailand and Indonesia could serve as a model for other ASEAN countries, Serbia offers a European connection, and Egypt and Senegal bring Arab and West African partners. “For China to bring in these very different actors seems very beneficial, if not in terms of science or technological contribution, then in terms of international standing, and with very little risk.”

If China's coalition reaches cislunar space in 2030, it may encounter American systems already operating there. More from Andrew's story:

C3 comes as the United States is building its own cislunar awareness capabilities, including the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Oracle, formerly CHPS, whose Oracle-M and Oracle-P expected to launch in 2027, and a Space Force cislunar coordination office established this year. There are also signs that Washington is moving cislunar space onto a military footing.

The Space Force aims to field an initial cislunar capability by late 2029, SpaceNews reported Oct. 23, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that “whoever controls subsea and cislunar is going to destroy and control the next fight.”

Trending This Week

NASA's two ESCAPADE spacecraft are headed to Mars after completing flybys of Earth

France has cleared Globalstar to launch and operate the 54 next-generation direct-to-device satellites that the U.S.-based operator aims to begin deploying next year.

NASA is moving forward with plans to convert an engineering model of a Mars rover into one that will go to the moon in 2028.

The Pentagon announced a $150 million conditional loan commitment to Rocket Lab to help the company increase production and launch capacity for its reusable Neutron rocket.

FROM SPACENEWS

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