NASA's Artemis Commercial Partnerships: How the Moon Program Uses the Private Sector

When NASA’s Artemis program formally began in the late 2010s, it was structured around a set of explicit bets on commercial partnerships that departed significantly from the agency’s historical approach to major exploration programs. The Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs relied on large prime contractors — Boeing, Lockheed, Grumman — operating under cost-plus arrangements where the government bore most of the financial risk. Artemis introduced commercial fixed-price contracts for lunar cargo delivery, selected commercial providers for the Human Landing System, and built its crew transport architecture on vehicles that SpaceX had developed with government investment but not government ownership.

By 2025, the outcomes of those bets are becoming clearer — not all of them as originally anticipated, but with enough evidence to assess which partnership models are working and which are encountering structural difficulty.

The Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program

The Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program represents NASA’s most aggressive experiment in commercial contracting for exploration. Rather than designing and building lunar landers itself, NASA established a pool of pre-qualified commercial lander providers and contracted for payload delivery services — essentially treating lunar surface access as a commercial service to be procured like any other, with NASA as a customer rather than the vehicle owner.

The approach carries deliberate risk. NASA publicly stated from CLPS’s outset that it expected some missions to fail, and that the program’s portfolio structure was designed to spread risk across multiple providers rather than concentrating it in a single government-managed system. That approach differed substantially from how NASA would manage a flagship mission under traditional procurement.

The first CLPS mission to reach the Moon was Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, launched in January 2024 on ULA’s inaugural Vulcan Centaur flight. Peregrine suffered a propellant leak shortly after launch and never reached the lunar surface. The spacecraft was maneuvered on a trajectory back toward Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.

The second CLPS mission, Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission using the Nova-C lander, launched in February 2024 and became the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The landing, however, was not fully nominal — Nova-C touched down in a tilted orientation, resting on its side rather than upright. Science data was still collected, and the mission was counted as a partial success.

The third CLPS mission, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, was planned for 2024 with payload delivery to the near side of the Moon. The CLPS program continues to contract additional missions with multiple providers.

The outcomes of the first CLPS missions illustrate both the value of the commercial approach and its limitations. The approach produced two actual lunar landing attempts within a single year — a tempo that would have been impossible under traditional flagship mission development. One partially succeeded; one failed before reaching the Moon. Both generated engineering data and operational experience across commercial teams that had never managed lunar missions before.

Human Landing System: SpaceX and Blue Origin

The Human Landing System (HLS) competition was more visible than CLPS and more consequential for near-term Artemis mission planning. NASA originally intended to select two HLS providers, following the dual-provider model from the Commercial Crew Program that provided redundancy. A budget constraint led to NASA initially selecting only SpaceX — with its Starship-derived HLS — in April 2021, triggering a protest from Blue Origin that was ultimately unsuccessful.

NASA later awarded Blue Origin a separate HLS contract under the Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) program in 2023, effectively restoring the dual-provider model that had been the original intent. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander development represents a substantial investment — the contract value and development trajectory make Blue Moon a more significant program than any Blue Origin has previously completed.

SpaceX’s HLS Starship is tightly coupled to the Starship vehicle development program. HLS Starship would be an orbital propellant depot that is launched, refueled from Starship tanker missions, and then lowered to the lunar surface. This architecture requires multiple successful Starship orbital missions and propellant transfer demonstrations before it can support a crewed lunar landing. The Starship program’s development status as of 2025 determines when HLS Starship could realistically support an Artemis crewed landing.

The HLS selection and Blue Moon contract together determine that the next era of lunar surface access for NASA astronauts will depend on two vehicles — one derived from SpaceX’s Starship, one from Blue Origin’s new development — that are both still in active development. The Artemis III crewed landing, originally targeted for 2025, has experienced schedule pressure tied to Starship’s development timeline.

The Gateway and Commercial Elements

The Lunar Gateway, a planned near-rectilinear halo orbit space station that would serve as a staging point for lunar surface access, is another element of Artemis with commercial dimensions. Gateway’s initial elements include the Power and Propulsion Element, contracted to Maxar Technologies, and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, for which Northrop Grumman received the contract.

NASA issued the Gateway Logistics Services contract for resupply and cargo delivery to the station on a commercial model analogous to the CLPS approach — seeking commercial providers to deliver cargo to the Gateway rather than developing the logistics system internally. SpaceX received the initial Gateway Logistics Services contract.

The Gateway has been the subject of recurring budget and schedule debates. Questions about whether the Gateway is necessary for the Artemis architecture — given that HLS Starship’s design does not actually require the Gateway for the initial landing scenarios — have led to periodic discussions about restructuring the Artemis mission sequence to defer Gateway development. As of 2025, those discussions continue within NASA and Congress without resolution.

Lessons from Commercial Partnership Structures

The Artemis commercial partnerships have generated evidence about which partnership structures work for which types of missions. The Gateway’s cargo logistics architecture specifically is examined in the Lunar Gateway commercial cargo analysis.

The NASA Commercial Crew Program remains the most successful model. Fixed-price contracts for crew transport to the ISS, with SpaceX and Boeing as providers, delivered operational crew rotation capability at substantially lower cost than earlier estimates for government-developed crew vehicles. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is now the primary crew transport vehicle for ISS, and the program’s financial structure has been examined as a model for other NASA commercial initiatives.

CLPS has demonstrated that commercial diversity and speed are achievable but that the failure rate assumption built into the program design is realistic rather than conservative. New commercial teams attempting lunar surface missions for the first time face genuine engineering challenges — landing on the Moon is hard, and the commercial approach does not change the physics.

HLS is the most uncertain element. The technical complexity of the crewed lunar landing architecture, the dependence on Starship’s development timeline, and the budget required to support two parallel HLS development programs simultaneously create a more constrained version of the dual-provider model than commercial crew provided.

What Congress and the Administration Debate

The commercial partnerships in Artemis exist within a political context that affects their stability. Artemis funding is annual and subject to congressional appropriation. Programs whose timelines extend across multiple administrations face the risk that budget priorities shift before key milestones are achieved.

The NASA Authorization Acts that authorize Artemis funding, and the annual appropriations bills that actually fund it, determine the program’s fiscal health. Historically, large exploration programs have been restructured when budgets tighten — the Constellation program, which Artemis replaced, was canceled after years of development.

The commercial model provides some insulation: when NASA pays for services rather than owning the vehicles, the program’s overhead is lower and the per-mission cost more predictable. But the fixed-price contract model for complex development programs can create friction when vehicles require more development investment than the contract anticipated — as Starliner’s commercial crew history illustrates.

Looking Ahead

The next major Artemis milestones — the Artemis II crewed lunar flyby, the Artemis III crewed landing — will test whether the commercial partnership structure can deliver on its lunar ambitions at the timelines and cost structures originally projected.

The CLPS program will continue generating lunar delivery experience across multiple commercial teams, with some missions failing and others partially or fully succeeding. That operational data is building the commercial lunar infrastructure ecosystem that a sustained lunar presence would require.

The HLS programs for both SpaceX and Blue Origin will continue development, with the Starship timeline as the likely near-term pacing item. Whether the crewed landing can occur within the decade as Artemis’s stated goal requires depends significantly on commercial development progress that NASA manages as a customer rather than as the program director.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between CLPS and the Human Landing System?

CLPS contracts commercial providers to deliver science payloads to the lunar surface on robotic landers — NASA buys cargo delivery as a service. The Human Landing System contracts commercial providers to develop crewed landers capable of carrying astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back. CLPS is operational; HLS vehicles are still in development.

Why did NASA choose only SpaceX for HLS initially?

Budget constraints limited the HLS award to a single provider in 2021, contrary to NASA’s stated preference for dual providers. After a successful protest period where the decision was reviewed and upheld, NASA later awarded a second HLS contract to Blue Origin under a separate solicitation, restoring the dual-provider model.

What happened to the first CLPS lander missions?

Astrobotic’s Peregrine, the first CLPS lander launched (January 2024), experienced a propellant leak after launch and never reached the Moon. Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C, launched February 2024, landed on the Moon but in a tilted orientation. Both missions generated engineering data despite not achieving fully nominal outcomes.

How does HLS Starship’s architecture work?

SpaceX’s HLS is a modified version of Starship designed for lunar surface operations. It would be launched to orbit, refueled via propellant transfer from Starship tanker missions, and then lowered to the lunar surface. The architecture requires orbital propellant transfer demonstrations before it can support a crewed mission.

Is the Lunar Gateway necessary for Artemis?

The Lunar Gateway is planned as a staging point for lunar surface access, but the initial Artemis crewed landing scenarios using HLS Starship can potentially be executed without the Gateway. Whether the Gateway is strictly necessary or serves primarily as infrastructure for later sustained operations is a recurring debate within NASA and Congress.

What is the Artemis III crewed landing target date?

The Artemis III mission, intended to be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, has experienced schedule pressure as Starship and other program elements develop. The target has shifted from initial aspirations of 2025. NASA’s current planning reflects ongoing assessment of HLS Starship readiness.