NASA has started locking in the first missions it says will turn the moon's south pole into a place where astronauts can actually stay and work.

The U.S. space agency announced Tuesday that three initial moon base-building missions this year will send cargo and vehicles for moving crews across the surface to the lunar south pole. The work builds on the recent Artemis II crewed flight around the moon and sets up a busier end to this decade, when astronauts start spending more time on the lunar surface.

The accelerated plan unfolds amid a broader rivalry with China, which has mounted a series of lunar missions and sketched out a long‑term research station for its own astronauts, known as taikonauts. Both countries now see the moon as the next stage for human exploration and a race for leadership in deep space.

China has its first human landing in its crosshairs and could beat NASA back to the surface of the moon. The United States' last crewed landing occurred in 1972, and no other nation has ever put boots on the lunar ground. Right now, NASA is targeting a landing of its Artemis IV mission in late 2028. 

"What we are embarking upon is extremely challenging, and we know so little from what is a combined 80 hours of lunar astronaut EVA time across the Apollo missions, and that was more than a half-century ago. So we are not jumping right into the glass-dome moon base," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in Washington during a news briefing. "We are leveraging the NASA playbook from the 1960s, figuring out what works and what doesn't, in this epic science of survival."

The moon base's construction at the south pole is split into three phases. First, it focuses on making landings reliable, trying out ways to survive the brutal polar environment, and delivering an initial trickle of cargo. Next, NASA and its partners add bigger power systems, more cargo runs, and, eventually, places where astronauts can live and work for longer stretches.

In the final phase, heavy cargo versions of commercial landers haul larger hardware — habitats, bigger power plants, more capable rovers, and science instruments — so astronauts can assemble the base over dozens of flights.

The moon base push comes as a clear pivot from NASA's earlier plan. Until recently, the agency's roadmap leaned heavily on Gateway, a small space station proposal that would have orbited the moon rather than established an outpost on the ground. Leaders now say they will shift their funding and workforce toward the base effort and look for ways to reuse some Gateway components.

The south pole sits at the center of the new strategy. Craters there stay in permanent shadow and likely hold frozen water. Nearby ridges can get sunlight for most of the lunar day. Water could supply drinking water, oxygen, and even rocket fuel. Steady light makes solar power easier. NASA wants to learn how to run a base in this region before it sends people on months‑long trips to Mars.

"The moon base is as beautiful as it is hostile," Isaacman said. "We go for the technology we will pioneer to get there, the science, and all that we will learn that will make life better here on Earth."

The first big step is Moon Base I, which will fly Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to a spot NASA calls Shackleton Connecting Ridge near the rim of Shackleton crater. The mission, targeted for launch no earlier than fall 2026, will carry NASA instruments, including stereo cameras to watch how rocket exhaust throws lunar dust and rocks and a laser reflector that helps orbiting spacecraft pinpoint their exact location using bounced laser light. NASA says this flight will cut risk for crewed Artemis landings.

Two more missions follow. Moon Base II, planned for launch later this year, will ride on Astrobotic's Griffin lander and deliver more than 1,100 pounds of cargo, including Astrolab's FLIP rover, to shake out early mobility systems. Moon Base III, also targeted for this year, will fly on Intuitive Machines' Nova‑C Trinity lander and carry the Lunar Vertex science package to study strange bright "swirl" markings on the surface, along with instruments from the European Space Agency and South Korea's astronomy institute.

To help crews and robots get around, NASA picked two companies to build lunar terrain vehicles — essentially moon‑ready utility trucks. The agency awarded about $219 million to Astrolab and $220 million to Lunar Outpost for the first phase of these rovers, which it wants operating by 2028. Astrolab's CLV‑1 rover weighs about 2,000 pounds in its stowed form, carries two astronauts plus cargo, and can top 6 mph on flat ground. Lunar Outpost's Pegasus rover can drive for up to a year, run under manual, remote, or autonomous control, and reach more than 9 mph.

NASA also plans a hopping‑drone mission, called Moonfall. In 2028, a Moonfall flight will send four small drones that make short hops across the south pole, then settle in and keep working for several months through the harsh lunar night. They will scout rough terrain, search for signs of buried ice, and beam back sharp images that help later landers avoid hazards. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California leads the drone design, and Firefly Aerospace will build the spacecraft that ferries them from Earth orbit to the Moon.

All of this plugs into the broader Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the surface and then push on to Mars. Artemis III, targeted for mid‑2027, will test more of the pieces the moon base needs, including docking with commercial landers. 

NASA officials say they do not know yet exactly where a long‑term base will sit or what it will look like. For now, they want many landers, rovers, and drones to explore different ridges and craters, then gradually build up something more like a small lunar neighborhood spread across a wide area, said Carlos García-Galán, the program executive for the moon base.

"With crews coming to the surface twice a year, we can expand the time that they can expend there before they come back home," said García-Galán. "Eventually, when we've matched the assets, habitation modules, with the logistics and all the things to move the logistics around, then we'll be able to say, 'Hey, we're permanently here, and we're not giving it up.'"