Commercial Lunar Payload Services

Commercial Lunar Payload Services
Models of the first three commercial landers selected for the program. Left to right: Peregrine by Astrobotic Technology, Nova-C by Intuitive Machines, and Z-01 by OrbitBeyond.
Type of project	Aerospace
Products	Proposed: Artemis-7, McCandless Lunar Lander, XL-1, MX-1, MX-2, MX-5, MX-9, SERIES-2 Current: Peregrine, Griffin, Nova-C, Blue Ghost, APEX 1.0
Owner	NASA
Country	United States
Established	2018; 6 years ago (2018)
Status	Active
Website	NASA.gov/commercial-lunar-payload-services

Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon. Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole^[1][2] where they will scout for lunar resources, test in situ resource utilization (ISRU) concepts, and perform lunar science to support the Artemis lunar program. CLPS is intended to buy end-to-end payload services between Earth and the lunar surface using fixed-price contracts.^[3][4] The program achieved the first landing on the moon by a commercial company in history with the IM-1 mission in 2024. The program was extended to add support for large payloads starting after 2025.

The CLPS program is run by NASA's Science Mission Directorate along with the Human Exploration and Operations and Space Technology Mission directorates. NASA expects the contractors to provide all activities necessary to safely integrate, accommodate, transport, and operate NASA payloads, including launch vehicles, lunar lander spacecraft, lunar surface systems, Earth re-entry vehicles and associated resources.^[4]

Eight missions have been contracted under the program (not counting one mission contract that was revoked after awarding and another mission contract that was cancelled after the contracted company went bankrupt).