THE MOON MARKET 2025 → 2028

Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen splashed down at 5:07 p.m. PDT off San Diego, completing a nearly 10-day journey that took them 252,756 miles from home at their farthest distance from Earth.[1] Their 695,081 miles in total surpassed the distance record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.[1] The capsule Integrity returned to a "flawless" splashdown.[8] Not a landing — that was never Artemis II's job.[2][8]

no surface touchdown on this flight · the humans are home, the landing was never scheduled here

Three companies, four missions, landing in late 2028 under the CLPS initiative, a backbone of NASA's Moon Base Program.[3] Every delivery carries the same three payloads:

"By flying the same science instruments on multiple landers, we will better understand potential hazards during landing and build out a global network of environmental data and location markers on the Moon."[3] With 17 surface deliveries across providers plus a polar rover (PROMISE) under consideration, the intent is a station network, not a flag collection.[3]

schedule risk is now a contract-killer: "future milestones were projected to take years to complete."[7]

The 2026 window is lost: the launch "cannot take place during the planned window this year," per the China Manned Space Engineering Office.[4] The director of Thailand's NARIT — whose instruments ride aboard — expects the mission next year, "potentially during one of two windows in spring or mid-summer."[4]

The prize is why both programs target the same pole — and it remains open: whether water ice exists in sufficient amounts to be useful "is not currently known," according to Brown University's James Head.[4] A University of Hong Kong lunar geologist reads the shift plainly: China's program is "shifting from an exploration program to a resource utilization program."[4]

Humans are back in lunar space, but the return to the surface has slipped to a target nobody fully believes in.[1][2][8] Landings are bought as a delivery market — standardized instruments so data from different sites is comparable.[3] The execution record is one clean success against two tipped landings and one cancelled order.[4][6][7] And the south pole's water is still unproven in useful quantities, with both nations racing to drill it first.[4] The quiet season is the market's period of assembly, and the assembly is not done.