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NASA’s secret weapon in the lunar space race may be … procurement reform?

Ars Technica • November 11, 2026 • business

Key Points:

NASA recently held an extensive news conference announcing numerous lunar contract awards and new opportunities, signaling a serious commitment to establishing a permanent Moon Base within the next decade.
The agency is employing a flexible, DARPA-style procurement strategy that involves a two-step proposal process, allowing companies to submit brief initial ideas before investing in detailed proposals, thus streamlining and focusing development efforts.
NASA is engaging a broad spectrum of commercial space companies, from established giants like Lockheed Martin and SpaceX to emerging startups, aiming to diversify its lunar supply chain and reduce reliance on a few major contractors.
This approach involves high risk by contracting companies with unproven or conceptual hardware, but NASA views it as necessary to accelerate lunar settlement efforts amid international competition, particularly with China.
Funding for these initiatives partly comes from reallocated budgets, such as those from the Lunar Gateway program, and NASA emphasizes that smaller contracts allow for efficient use of taxpayer dollars and flexible scaling of the overall Moon Base program budget.

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