NASA has opened the second phase of its commercial Moon delivery programme, selecting eight companies to compete for lunar cargo missions under a framework worth up to $10 billion over ten years. The announcement was made on Saturday at the MAX POWER aerospace expo at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Under CLPS 2, the next round of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies will bid for task orders to carry NASA science, technology and infrastructure payloads to the lunar surface. The $10 billion figure is a combined ceiling for future orders, not money awarded: no company is guaranteed any share of it.

NASA also raised the value of the existing CLPS 1.0 contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to support the first phase of its Moon Base objectives. That contract runs through November 2028, with a further five years to complete deliveries already awarded.

The same package of announcements included PROMISE, a six-wheeled nuclear-powered rover that will prospect for water ice at the lunar South Pole, targeted for launch in late 2028. Blue Origin received a $94 million base contract, with a further $140 million performance option, to deliver the rover on its Mark 1 lander. NASA also awarded transport orders worth about $1.3 billion to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space.