NASA has awarded contracts worth nearly $1 billion to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Astrolab, Lunar Outpost and Firefly Aerospace Inc. to build and deliver early infrastructure for a permanent moon base, the agency's first major commercial procurement push under

NASA will soon name the crew for Artemis III - the third mission in the space agency's Artemis program to send a manned crew to Mars.

NASA officials on Tuesday detailed the space agency’s plans to establish a lunar base, where astronauts could live and work long-term with the ultimate goal of studying the moon and its origins, as well as how best to send the first humans to Mars.

On June 9, NASA will reveal the astronauts who will fly on the Artemis 3 docking mission in Earth orbit next year.

The afterglow of Artemis II’s triumph has barely faded, and NASA is already setting about placing the first footprints on the moon in over 50 years. However, all the things that the space agency and its partners have to do makes sending four human beings around the moon seem like a weekend excursion by comparison.

NASA announced which two companies would be tasked to build lunar rovers for its future moon base as well as the company that will fly them there among other plans during an event from its Washington headquarters Tuesday.

For 10 days in April, NASA’s Artemis II crew traveled around the far side of the Moon and back, marking one of the most important crewed lunar missions since the Apollo era. But alongside the technical milestones,