NASA Opens a $10 Billion Lane to the Moon, With Intuitive Machines, Firefly and Voyager Cleared to Compete

Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR), Firefly Aerospace (NASDAQ: FLY) and Voyager Technologies (NYSE: VOYG) are among eight companies NASA has cleared to compete for missions under a new lunar delivery framework worth up to $10 billion. Redwire (NYSE: RDW) won a separate award in the same package to build parts of a planned power and communications tower on the Moon.

Key Points

• NASA unveiled Commercial Lunar Payload Services 2 (CLPS 2), a 10-year framework with a combined ceiling of $10 billion, to support a permanent base at the Moon’s south pole.
• Intuitive Machines, Firefly and Voyager are among the eight companies eligible to compete for future delivery missions.
• Redwire won an award for components of a lunar power and communications tower.
• NASA also raised the ceiling on its existing CLPS contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion.

A Framework, Not a Check

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the program Saturday at an aerospace expo at Kennedy Space Center. “We are building the Moon Base mission by mission,” Isaacman said.

The $10 billion is a ceiling for future task orders over 10 years, shared across all eight companies. In other words, no company received that money on Saturday. Instead, selected companies now compete for individual missions as NASA issues them. Along with Intuitive Machines, Firefly and Voyager, the eligible companies are SpaceX, Blue Origin, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin Space and Northrop Grumman Space Systems.

What Each Small Cap Brings

For Intuitive Machines, the selection adds to a busy stretch with NASA. PRISM MarketView reported last week that the company won its third NASA Earth science mission in six months, after booking a $600 million August as its spacecraft manufacturing work expanded.

Firefly comes into the framework with momentum of its own. On Friday, the company signed an engine and licensing deal worth more than $1.3 billion with AST SpaceMobile.

Voyager continues to widen its government business. The company recently won a $22.4 million Department of Defense contract for next-generation satellite deployment systems.

Redwire, meanwhile, landed one of the package’s concrete awards. Its tower components win follows a $20 million DARPA contract for additional VLEO flight testing announced last week.

The Bigger Lunar Build-Out

Beyond CLPS 2, NASA issued six transportation task orders worth about $1.3 billion combined to test cargo transport between Earth and the Moon. Blue Origin won a $94 million base contract to deliver NASA’s nuclear-powered PROMISE rover to the lunar south pole in late 2028. In addition, SpaceX will launch cislunar communications satellites on Starship in 2028.

Together, the awards show NASA moving from one-off landings toward a steady stream of commercial missions. For small-cap space companies, that means more chances to win work, though they will compete with the largest names in the industry for each order.

Intuitive Machines, Voyager Technologies and Redwire are components of the PRISM Space Index. Firefly Aerospace is a component of the PRISM Aerospace and Defense Index.