Four commercial lunar landers are scheduled to attempt Moon landings in 2026, the busiest year in the history of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The biggest update is now physical: Astrobotic unveiled its Griffin-1 lander in Pittsburgh on June 15, with final integration under way before environmental testing and late-2026 launch preparations. Griffin, Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 2, Intuitive Machines' IM-3, and the Draper-ispace APEX 1.0 represent a combined $600 million-plus in NASA contracts and carry science payloads that will directly shape how, and where, astronauts walk on the Moon later this decade. With Artemis II on the launch pad and a crewed lunar landing now targeting 2028, the data these four missions gather on seismic activity, radiation, regolith heat flow, and magnetic anomalies is not optional background science. It is the prerequisite for safe human presence at the south pole and, eventually, the far side. 2026 is when the lunar surface prep campaign shifts from one mission at a time to four in parallel. Four distinct CLPS missions are targeting the Moon in 2026, each carrying payloads critical to Artemis human landing planning. Credit: AI-generated / Cislunar News 4 CLPS Missions in 2026 $2.6B CLPS Program Ceiling (through 2028) 4 Distinct Landing Sites 15+ Science Payloads Combined Griffin Mission 1: Astrobotic's Shot at the South Pole Astrobotic's Griffin lander carries the highest-stakes landing target of the four missions, and it has now moved from rendering to clean-room hardware. Astrobotic unveiled Griffin-1 on June 15 at its Pittsburgh headquarters, where the spacecraft was shown in final integration before shipment for environmental testing. A Falcon Heavy will lift Griffin toward the Nobile Crater region, at the lunar south pole, in late 2026. That same territory is where NASA wants to put human boots under Artemis IV, making Griffin's precision landing data among the most operationally critical in the entire CLPS portfolio. The mission had to rebuild its identity after NASA canceled VIPER, the ice-hunting rover that was originally Griffin's primary payload, in July 2024. VIPER's cost had ballooned from roughly $433 million to $647 million, and its schedule had slipped past the November 2025 launch window. Rather than cancel Griffin outright, NASA recast the task order as a technology demonstration of the lander itself, using its Terrain Relative Navigation and Hazard Detection and Avoidance systems as the main deliverables. AI-generated image Astrobotic's Griffin lander targeting the Nobile Crater region at the lunar south pole, late 2026 on a Falcon Heavy. Credit: AI-generated / Cislunar News The payload manifest now centers on Astrolab's FLIP rover, a precursor to the company's larger FLEX lunar terrain vehicle work. Astrobotic says Griffin-1 will deliver the largest commercial payload yet sent to the Moon, with cargo from NASA, ESA, Astrolab, Astrobotic, and cultural archive partners. Griffin will also carry Astrobotic's CubeRover mobility demonstration, a NASA Laser Retroreflector Array, ESA's LandCam-X imaging payload, and Nanofiche's archival library capsule. Griffin Mission 1 , Key Details • Launch Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon Heavy from LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center • Launch Window: Late 2026 • Landing Site: Nobile Crater region, lunar south pole • Payload Capacity: 625 kg • Key Science: Precision landing nav and hazard avoidance demonstration; FLEX rover mobility • NASA Contract: Task Order TO20A Astrobotic's first attempt, Peregrine Mission 1, failed in January 2024 after a propellant leak drained the spacecraft before it could reach the Moon. Griffin uses a different propulsion design and has now reached the final assembly phase. The next checkpoints are environmental testing, delivery to Cape Canaveral, FLIP rover integration, and launch processing for Falcon Heavy. June 2026 Update: Griffin Becomes Moon Base II NASA has folded Griffin-1 into its Moon Base sequence as Moon Base II. Astrobotic says the lander is finishing integration, will go through environmental testing, and will later move to Cape Canaveral for final launch preparations. The update matters because Griffin is no longer only a line item in the CLPS manifest. It is the first infrastructure-class lander NASA is publicly tying to early Moon Base logistics, with enough payload capacity to carry rovers, science instruments, and future power hardware concepts. Blue Ghost Mission 2: Firefly's Far-Side Leap Firefly Aerospace is going somewhere no U.S. lander has ever reached: the far side of the Moon. Blue Ghost Mission 2 targets the Gruithuisen Domes, a volcanic formation in the northwest region of the near-side/far-side boundary, for late 2026. The mission is a dual-stack, launching a Blue Ghost surface lander on top of Firefly's Elytra Dark orbital vehicle, together stretching about 6.9 meters tall. Elytra Dark will separate first and enter a 5-year science orbit, serving as a communications relay for the surface mission and hosting lunar imaging services under Firefly's Ocula commercial imaging platform. The surface Blue Ghost carries the LuSEE-Night radio experiment from Brookhaven National Laboratory, which needs the far side's radio-quiet environment to study the universe's Dark Ages, a period before the first stars when no optical light existed. It also carries a JPL User Terminal for NASA's LunaNet lunar internet relay architecture and SPIDER, a seismometer package. ESA's Lunar Pathfinder relay satellite rides as a co-passenger, also separating in orbit. The UAE's Rashid Rover 2 will deploy from the surface lander, giving the Emirates Space Agency its second lunar surface attempt. Fleet Space's VMAG and Volta Space's wireless power transfer experiment round out the payload manifest. AI-generated image Blue Ghost Mission 2 targets the Gruithuisen Domes on the lunar far side, with the Elytra Dark orbital vehicle providing 5 years of imaging and relay services. Credit: AI-generated / Cislunar News Why the Far Side Matters for Artemis The far side never faces Earth, meaning it has no radio interference from human civilization. That makes it ideal for low-frequency radio astronomy, but it also means any lander needs a dedicated communications relay. Blue Ghost Mission 2 effectively lays the relay infrastructure while doing surface science, solving the comms problem for all future far-side missions. Firefly's first Blue Ghost mission in early 2025 was a full commercial success. It was the first commercial lander to survive and operate through a full lunar day, something Intuitive Machines' IM-1 did not achieve. Blue Ghost Mission 2 builds on the same flight-proven hardware platform with enhanced reliability modifications, and Firefly has publicly committed to a faster build cadence using the Mission 1 lessons. IM-3: Intuitive Machines Goes to Reiner Gamma Intuitive Machines' third Nova-C mission heads to one of the Moon's strangest surface features: Reiner Gamma. It is a large, bright swirling anomaly on the western Ocean of Storms with no topographic relief. No crater, no mountain , just an unusual magnetic field that creates a "mini-magnetosphere" deflecting the solar wind and producing a bright albedo marking visible from Earth with a backyard telescope. NASA selected Reiner Gamma specifically because understanding the relationship between the magnetic anomaly, the swirl pattern, and the local space weathering environment could influence how future lunar habitats are sited. Magnetic mini-magnetospheres have been proposed as natural radiation shields for human outposts, but the mechanism is not understood well enough to engineer around. IM-3 carries four NASA payloads along with ESA, KASI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute), Johns Hopkins APL, and JPL instruments targeting exactly that science. AI-generated image Intuitive Machines IM-3 targets Reiner Gamma, a magnetic swirl anomaly on the Ocean of Storms. The science could influe