Progress · The Moon
Can we build a Moon base?
Twelve people walked on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972. The longest stay lasted about three days. Visiting was the achievement then. Staying is the problem now.
We break the question into ten capabilities a permanent base depends on. None stands alone: power needs transport, life support needs power, and almost everything needs robots. Select any part of the base to follow the chain.
Swipe across the base and tap a part, or choose a capability below.Select a part of the base, or a capability below.
Capability 1 of 10
Transportation
Getting people and cargo to the surface — and home again — reliably.
Why it’s hard
Everything a base needs has to be launched out of Earth’s gravity, carried about 384,000 kilometres and set down without a runway. A base needs that to become routine: regular cargo landings, and crews who can count on a ride home.
What progress would look like
Cargo landing on a schedule rather than as one-off events; landers that fly more than once; crewed landings that repeat.
On the schedule we track
18 upcoming launches are bound for lunar orbit; the next listed is Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX) — 2026 (year estimate). See every one
Depends on
Nothing else here — every other capability starts with getting there.
Makes possible
Capability 2 of 10
Power
Keeping everything running through a two-week night.
Why it’s hard
Most of the Moon spends about fourteen Earth days in darkness at a stretch, with surface temperatures falling below −170 °C. Solar power alone needs vast storage to last that long. Some ridges near the poles are lit most of the time, and compact nuclear fission is studied for everywhere else.
What progress would look like
A power system that keeps a crewed outpost alive through a full lunar night.
Depends on
Makes possible
Capability 3 of 10
Surface mobility
Moving people and equipment across rough, dusty ground.
Why it’s hard
Apollo’s rovers covered a few tens of kilometres per mission. A permanent base needs vehicles that last for years, survive the cold of the lunar night and carry crews in pressurised cabins over long distances.
What progress would look like
Pressurised rovers in service for years rather than days.
Depends on
Makes possible
Capability 4 of 10
Medicine & human health
Keeping crews healthy, far from any hospital.
Why it’s hard
At one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, under more radiation and days from home, crews face risks to bone, muscle and long-term health, and emergencies with limited help. Long stays need onboard diagnosis, treatment and ways to counter those effects.
What progress would look like
Crews completing long surface stays in good health.
Depends on
Makes possible
Nothing else in this framework depends on it directly.
Capability 5 of 10
Habitats
Pressurised, shielded places to live and work.
Why it’s hard
The Moon has no atmosphere and no global magnetic field, so a habitat has to hold air in while keeping radiation, micrometeoroids and temperature swings out. Shipping all that shielding from Earth is expensive, which is why covering habitats with lunar soil is a leading idea.
What progress would look like
A habitat that keeps a crew safe for months at a time, not days.
Depends on
Makes possible
Capability 6 of 10
Life support
Air, water and food, recycled as close to a closed loop as possible.
Why it’s hard
Every resupply from Earth is days away and costly, so a base must regenerate oxygen and recycle water with very high reliability. The International Space Station already recovers most of the water its crews use; a lunar base would need to go further, and eventually grow food.
What progress would look like
Life-support systems that run for long periods with little resupply.
Depends on
Makes possible
Capability 7 of 10
Communications
A constant link to Earth, and between people and machines on the surface.
Why it’s hard
Radio takes about 1.3 seconds to reach the Moon, so the near side can talk to Earth almost live. But the far side never faces Earth, and parts of the polar regions rarely have it in view. Continuous coverage needs relay satellites in lunar orbit and networks on the ground.
What progress would look like
Relay networks that give the south pole and the far side continuous coverage.
Depends on
Makes possible
Capability 8 of 10
Robotics & autonomy
Machines that build, maintain and explore — often before people arrive.
Why it’s hard
Crew time is the scarcest resource on any base. Robots have to prepare sites, move soil and handle routine maintenance, and they need a good deal of independence, because the signal delay makes fine control from Earth slow.
What progress would look like
Robots doing construction and upkeep with minimal human supervision.
Depends on
Makes possible
Capability 9 of 10 · In-situ resource utilisation (ISRU)
Living off the land
Making water, oxygen and propellant from what is already there.
Why it’s hard
Water ice sits in permanently shadowed craters near the poles, and lunar soil is roughly 40 per cent oxygen by mass, locked in minerals. Extracting them at scale would make a base far less dependent on Earth — and could turn the Moon into a refuelling stop.
What progress would look like
Water or oxygen extracted from lunar material in useful quantities.
Depends on
Makes possible
Capability 10 of 10
Manufacturing
Building with local materials instead of shipping everything.
Why it’s hard
Lunar soil can in principle be sintered or 3D-printed into landing pads, radiation shielding and structures. Doing it reliably in vacuum, in abrasive dust and at one-sixth gravity is still an open engineering problem.
What progress would look like
Landing pads or shielding built from lunar material.
Depends on
Makes possible
Tracked now
Lunar missions on the schedule
Every upcoming launch bound for lunar orbit, plus the Artemis program’s own flights, from Launch Library 2 records we capture daily (latest 13:01 UTC, 19 Oct 2026). Dates shown as a month, quarter or year are estimate windows.
Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX)
2026 (year estimate)
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries · Lunar Orbit
Griffin Mission One
December 2026 (month estimate)
SpaceX · Lunar Orbit
Changed 2 Oct: target moved from November 2026 into December 2026. History →
Nova-C IM-3
Q1 2027 (quarter estimate)
SpaceX · Lunar Orbit
AYAP-1
April 2027 (month estimate)
SpaceX · Lunar Orbit
Artemis IIIArtemis
June 2027 (month estimate)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Low Earth Orbit
Nova-C IM-4 & 2 Lunar Data Relay Satellites
H2 2027 (half-year estimate)
SpaceX · Lunar Orbit
Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Mission 2
2027 (year estimate)
SpaceX · Lunar Orbit
Chandrayaan-4 First Launch
2027 (year estimate)
Indian Space Research Organization · Lunar Orbit
Astrobotic-3
2027 (year estimate)
SpaceX · Lunar Orbit
Chandrayaan-4 Second Launch
2027 (year estimate)
Indian Space Research Organization · Lunar Orbit
Luna 26
2027 (year estimate)
Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS) · Lunar Orbit
Chang'e 7
2027 (year estimate)
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation · Lunar Orbit
Artemis IVArtemis
H1 2028 (half-year estimate)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Lunar Orbit
Luna 27
2028 (year estimate)
Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS) · Lunar Orbit
Artemis VArtemis
H2 2028 (half-year estimate)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Lunar Orbit
ispace Mission 3 ULTRA
2028 (year estimate)
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries · Lunar Orbit
Chang'e 8
2029 (year estimate)
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation · Lunar Orbit
Gateway PPE & HALOArtemis
the 2020s (decade estimate)
SpaceX · Lunar Orbit
Changed 16 Oct: target widened from 2027 to sometime in the 2020s. History →
SLS Block 1B | Artemis VIArtemis
Q3 2030 (quarter estimate)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Orbit not listed
Argonaut Mission 1
2030 (year estimate)
Arianespace · Lunar Orbit
SLS Block 1B | Artemis VIIArtemis
Q3 2031 (quarter estimate)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Orbit not listed
How far we’ve come
The road so far
1959
Luna 2 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the Moon.
1966
Luna 9 makes the first soft landing.
1969
Apollo 11: the first people walk on the Moon.
1972
Apollo 17: the last crew to land, so far.
Twelve people walked on the surface across six landings. The longest stay lasted about three days.
2009
LCROSS confirms water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole.
2019
Chang’e 4 makes the first landing on the far side.
2024
The first commercial landing, and the first samples from the far side.
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus touched down in February; China’s Chang’e 6 returned far-side samples in June.
2025
Firefly’s Blue Ghost makes the first fully successful commercial landing.
How to read this page
This is a framework, not a scorecard. There is no honest single number for how close a Moon base is, so we don’t publish one. The capability descriptions set out physics and engineering constraints; they don’t grade any program.
What we track — launches, schedule changes, government opportunities, filings — appears where a structured record supports it, like the lunar schedule above. Every date is shown at the precision its source gives, and every change links to the captures that show it.