Commercial Lunar Landers: 2026 Scorecard — Missions, Crashes and What’s Next

Originally published on The Daily Flare.

The Moon has a traffic problem — of the commercial kind

For half a century, landing on the Moon was something only governments did. That changed in 2024, when the first private spacecraft attempted lunar landings under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Since then, a small fleet of company-built lunar landers has been queueing up for the Moon — with mixed results, real science delivered, and NASA now folding the whole effort into something bigger: a permanent Moon base.

Here’s where commercial lunar missions stand in late 2026: who’s landed, who’s crashed, and what’s launching next.

Lunar lander scorecard: the results so far

Mission	Company	Date	Outcome
Peregrine Mission One	Astrobotic	Jan 2024	Failed — propellant leak, never reached the Moon
IM-1 (Odysseus)	Intuitive Machines	Feb 2024	Reached surface, tipped over on landing
HAKUTO-R Mission 1	ispace (Japan)	Apr 2023	Crashed on descent
Blue Ghost Mission 1	Firefly Aerospace	Mar 2025	Success — upright landing, full science return
IM-2 (Athena)	Intuitive Machines	Mar 2025	Landed, tipped over again
Resilience (M2)	ispace (Japan)	Jun 2025	Crashed — laser rangefinder failure

The winners: Firefly’s Blue Ghost

The standout success story is Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost. In March 2025 it became the first commercial spacecraft in history to achieve a fully successful, upright soft landing on the Moon, operating through a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days) and returning all of its NASA science data. The mission’s measurements have already forced scientists to revise fifty-year-old thermal models of the lunar interior — genuine science, not just a stunt.

Firefly has since become NASA’s most-awarded CLPS vendor: a second Blue Ghost mission ($112M, 2026), plus Blue Ghost-4 carrying a Canadian Space Agency rover (2027–28), and another Blue Ghost variant selected in June 2026.

The hard lessons: tipping and crashing

Intuitive Machines reached the surface twice — and fell over twice. Its Odysseus lander (IM-1, February 2024) caught a foot on the surface and tipped, and its Athena lander (IM-2, March 2025) did the same. Both still returned useful data, but the back-to-back tip-overs underline how unforgiving lunar landing remains: no atmosphere to brake in, light-delayed communications, and terrain mapped only roughly.

Japan’s ispace has fared worse: two attempts, two crashes. Its Resilience lander (June 2025) lost valid altitude readings from its laser rangefinder during descent, couldn’t slow down in time, and hit the surface hard. The company has budgeted for a third attempt with its larger Apex 1.0 lander, targeted no earlier than 2027.

Astrobotic’s first Peregrine lander never even got its shot — a propellant leak hours after launch in January 2024 doomed the mission before it left Earth orbit.

What’s launching next

The 2026–2028 manifest is the busiest yet:

• Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 “Endurance” — first uncrewed flight targeted no earlier than Q3 2026, aiming for the Shackleton Connecting Ridge at the lunar south pole, where permanently shadowed craters may hold water ice. It will test the BE-7 engine, precision landing and power systems ahead of the crewed MK2 version.
• Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 — the company’s heavy lander, designed to deliver over 500 kg including Astrolab’s FLIP rover, launching on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy no earlier than Q4 2026.
• Intuitive Machines IM-3/IM-4 — additional Nova-C landers, with IM-4 selected under a June 2026 contract.
• Firefly Blue Ghost-2 and beyond — follow-on missions through 2029, including the Canadian rover delivery.
• Draper’s SERIES-2 lander — a $73M CLPS mission also on the 2026 manifest.
• ispace Mission 3 — the larger Apex 1.0 lander, earliest 2027.

NASA slides shown at its March 2026 “Ignition” event indicated up to four landings projected for 2026 and as many as nine in 2027 — though analysts note the gap between contracted missions and demonstrated flight cadence remains the program’s central challenge.

The big pivot: from CLPS to Moon Base

In March 2026, NASA reclassified three CLPS missions as the first three missions of a new Moon Base program: Blue Origin’s Endurance (Moon Base 1), Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 (Moon Base 2) and an Intuitive Machines Nova-C flight (Moon Base 3). On June 30, 2026, the agency awarded four more Phase One lander contracts worth nearly $600 million — two Astrobotic Peregrine flights, one Intuitive Machines Nova-C and one Firefly Blue Ghost variant — targeting no earlier than 2028.

The plan is phased: prove robotic landing and surface operations first, build infrastructure and ground assets, then deliver astronauts — with the earliest crewed surface operations under this architecture possible around 2028. NASA’s Artemis program, running in parallel, aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface in the 2027–2028 window.

How the business model works

CLPS flipped the traditional NASA contracting model on its head. Instead of NASA owning the spacecraft and micromanaging the mission, the agency buys delivery — a fixed-price ride to the lunar surface — while the company designs, builds and operates the lander. Contract values are modest by space standards: $73–179 million per mission, compared with billions for traditional NASA flagships. The companies own their hardware, can sell spare payload space to other customers (universities, space agencies, even memorial companies), and keep the intellectual property. NASA gets cheaper, more frequent access to the Moon; the companies get anchor customers and flight heritage. The trade-off is risk: with lower NASA oversight, failures like Peregrine and Resilience are part of the model, not anomalies.

Why everyone is aiming for the south pole

Nearly every upcoming mission targets the lunar south pole — and for good reason. Permanently shadowed craters there are believed to harbor water ice, which could provide drinking water, breathable oxygen and even rocket fuel (split into hydrogen and oxygen) for a sustained presence. Peaks of near-eternal sunlight nearby offer ideal spots for solar power. Blue Origin’s Endurance aims for the Shackleton Connecting Ridge; NASA’s science payloads prioritize studying volatiles in the regolith. The south pole is also where Artemis astronauts are headed — the commercial landers are, in effect, scouting and supplying the campsite.

Milestones to watch

• Late 2026: Do Endurance and Griffin-1 fly on schedule? Two successful heavy landings would double the program’s win column.
• 2027: Nine missions are on paper — even half that would be a record year for lunar landings.
• 2027–28: ispace’s third attempt; the Canadian rover on Blue Ghost-4.
• 2028+: The first Moon Base Phase One missions and, if schedules hold, Artemis astronauts back on the surface — this time to stay.

The science riding along

These aren’t just technology demonstrations — each lander carries real NASA science. Blue Ghost’s payloads measured the heat flowing from the lunar interior, data that has already forced revision of decades-old thermal models. Upcoming missions carry spectrometers to map surface composition, cameras to study how engine plumes disturb lunar soil (critical for landing near future habitats), retroreflectors for precision navigation, and even a biology experiment studying how yeast handles the Moon’s low gravity and high radiation. The commercial model means science gets to the surface years faster — and far cheaper — than on traditional flagship missions.

How close, honestly?

Commercial lunar landings are here — imperfect, expensive and still failure-prone, but real, with paying science payloads aboard. Commercial lunar operations — regular, reliable, increasingly autonomous missions supporting a permanent presence — are roughly one successful manifest cycle away, likely 2027–2028 if the current launch queue holds. The trajectory from “first private landing” (2024–25) to “private landers as infrastructure” (2028+) is the fastest ramp-up in lunar exploration history.