Nasa has detailed a series of lunar rovers, drones and equipment that it plans to send to the Moon as part of plans for a crewed landing and eventual Moon base.

The agency also outlined plans to send the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) instrument to the Moon later this year. This will study how rocket exhaust displaces lunar soil during a spacecraft’s descent and landing. As the Artemis programme shifts to launching larger, heavier payloads and building sustained structures at the lunar south pole, engineers must predict how thruster plumes interact with the ground prior to the manned landing that will take place in 2028.

In addition to SCALPSS, Nasa plans to deploy an instrument called the Laser Retroreflective Array, which helps orbiting spacecraft determine a more precise location using reflected laser light. Both are expected to be installed using Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander later in 2026 as part of the Moon Base 1 mission.

Moon Base II, also planned for launch later this year, will deliver more than 1,100 pounds of cargo on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, including Astrolab’s FLIP rover.

Moon Base III will then follow, with payloads designed to study lunar swirls – light spots on the surface of the Moon – to improve understanding of surface evolution and material behaviour under extreme conditions.

“The Moon base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” said Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman. “Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable.”

The missions announced this week are just the first of more than a dozen that will be announced later this year, each designed to generate operational data and reduce risk ahead of crewed Artemis surface activities.

The agency also shared new updates on MoonFall, a mission that will send four drones to fly short hops on the lunar surface as they survey potential landing sites for Artemis astronauts. Nasa selected Firefly Aerospace to build the spacecraft that will transport the drones from Earth orbit to the Moon with a proposed 2028 launch. The drones will independently land on the lunar surface and then gather high-resolution imagery of hard-to-reach terrain over the course of a single lunar day. After each drone’s final flight, its survive-the-night payload will continue to operate for several months.

The ambitious programme is being launched despite fears that Nasa budgets will be slashed in the future. Last year, the Trump administration proposed a 24% budget cut that would slash the number of agency science missions as well as reducing Earth observation and programmes such as Mars Sample Return. The Planetary Society estimated that as many as 41 space missions were at risk from the largest cuts in Nasa’s history.

Although the White House proposed the cuts, Congress ultimately voted them down through a bipartisan bill in January. But in April this year, the White House effectively put forward another round of similar-sized cuts that are still in limbo at the moment while the Senate works on its own budget proposal.