Overview
- Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 (Endurance) has finished major environmental and communications checkouts, including thermal‑vacuum tests and links with NASA’s TDRSS and Deep Space Network.
- Firefly Aerospace has configured Blue Ghost Mission 2 as a dual‑spacecraft stack with Elytra to attempt the first U.S. landing on the Moon’s far side and carry three NASA science payloads.
- Intuitive Machines’ IM‑3 (Nova‑C) is in late integration and will deploy Altus‑1, a lunar data‑relay satellite, to provide communications for far‑side and polar operations while delivering NASA and commercial instruments to Reiner Gamma.
- Voyager Technologies’ Griffin‑1 completed mass‑properties testing and is in environmental testing at JPL with a planned late‑2026 launch to deliver the largest commercial payload yet, including five NASA instruments on the Astrolab FLIP rover.
- NASA and Northrop Grumman are repurposing Gateway‑derived avionics to test three surface demonstrations that show shared power and survive‑the‑night systems needed to keep instruments and habitats operating through multi‑day lunar nights.