NASA’s permanent Moon base plans start with three missions this year

Stevie Bonifield is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.

On Tuesday, NASA announced several upcoming lunar missions to the Moon’s South Pole region. These missions will pave the way for the crewed Artemis landing slated for 2028, starting with three Moon Base missions NASA says are “the first of more than a dozen missions that will be announced this year.”

• Moon Base I, launching “no earlier than fall 2026,” will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to bring NASA payloads to the Moon, including the Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies instrument and the Laser Retroreflective Array. NASA will use these “to study how thrusters interact with the Moon’s surface” and help “orbiting spacecraft determine a more precise location using reflected laser light.”
• Moon Base II, launching “later this year,”...

Copyright of this story solely belongs to theverge.com. To see the full text click HERE