NASA’s Moon Base Update: All Going Well Despite Blue Origin’s New Glenn Explosion
NASA officially announced its Moon Base in March 2026 and has been working on several projects simultaneously to advance the goal of putting humans on the moon in a permanent location.
On Tuesday, NASA gave reporters some updates on how the program is coming along during a press conference and Q&A session.
The overall tone was positive as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Moon Base program manager Carlos García-Galán discussed NASA’s upcoming plans and fielded questions about whether those plans were affected by recent events, such as the sudden explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket during a ground test in late May.
The explosion caused extensive damage to Blue Origin’s only launch pad, and there were concerns that it would set back NASA’s Moon Base plans as the damage would take time to repair. Some of the Moon Base missions were planned to use New Glenn as a launch vehicle.
García-Galán and Isaacman say everything is still going according to plan.
“Blue Origin’s response to this situation is almost overwhelming,” Isaacman said. “They’re making great progress, so Plan A is still going to launch the (Mark 1 lunar lander) at New Glenn. We have time. They’re very committed to the business of getting back to launching New Glenn before the end of the year.”
García-Galán said three lunar landers are in advanced stages of development, including the Blue Origin Mark 1 lunar lander, the Astrobotic Griffin Lander and the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander. This was in response to reports that Blue Origin’s lunar lander had been delayed for more than half a year.
The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lander was the first commercially built to successfully land on the Moon.
NASA is also busy making sure that there is a lot of science being done during all these missions. The agency awarded several new contracts for various science instruments, including a camera for mapping the lunar dust during landing, a retroreflector array to help guide incoming spacecraft waiting in orbit and LETS, a spectrometer that measures the radiation environment on the moon.
It’s all part of the first phase of NASA’s Moon Base program, which is scheduled for completion in 2029, quickly followed by phases two and three, which culminate in a permanent, long-term human presence on the moon.
More NASA missions are on the schedule, too
The Moon Base took center stage, but Isaacman and García-Galán still took time to talk about other things going on at NASA. Artemis III’s mission is still planned. NASA selected the crew in early June and has spent the entire month gathering and assembling all the components needed to launch the mission in 2027.
Isaacman said the goal is to assemble everything again for what NASA calls “wet” wear tests by the end of 2026, and that the Artemis IV hardware was already in the early stages of assembly and testing.
NASA is considering returning the Promise Rover for use on the moon after years of being used as a problem solver for Curiosity and Perseverance.
NASA had one surprise up its sleeve. Isaacman and García-Galán suggested that NASA might repurpose its third Mars rover as a moon rover instead.
Most people who follow science and space are familiar with the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers currently deployed on Mars. The third rover, called Promise, is less well known as it is currently being used as a development and troubleshooting platform for the other two rovers by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The goal, if NASA goes through with it, is to equip Promise with nuclear power and set it free on the moon to collect data, like its cousins on Mars.
“Having a nuclear RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generator) on [the moon base] it allows us to go wherever we want, regardless of the light,” said García-Galán. “Surviving a moonlit night is one of the biggest challenges, and with this ability, we won’t have to worry about that.”
Sthembiso’s life so far has been testing fixes and ways to solve problems before they are beamed to Curiosity and Perseverance on Mars, but NASA says the JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) team has enough knowledge to no longer need it, which frees Sthembiso to do something else.
“We have years of experience running two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we have this hardware that taxpayers have invested heavily in,” Isaacman said. “So the question was asked, what if we send it to the moon? JPL is great with these great ideas.”
The rover will add more power and payloads, and give astronauts another tool to explore the lunar surface, especially during lunar nights. It takes about two weeks, which would make any solar powered solutions almost useless for a long trip.
