Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon.

A variety of exploration, science, and technology objectives that could be addressed by regularly sending instruments, experiments and other small payloads to the Moon have been identified by NASA.

[3] When the concept study on the Resource Prospector rover was cancelled in April 2018, NASA officials explained that lunar surface exploration would continue in the future, but using commercial lander services under a new CLPS program.

[5][6] Later that April, NASA announced the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program as the first step in the solicitation for flights to the Moon.

[14][15] On July 1, 2019, a $5.6 million contract was awarded to Astrobotic and its partner Carnegie Mellon University to develop MoonRanger, a 13 kg (29 lb) rover to carry payloads on the Moon for NASA's CLPS.

[17][18] The rover would carry science payloads yet to be determined and developed by other providers, that would focus on scouting and creating 3D maps of a polar region for signs of water ice or lunar pits for entrances to Moon caves.

[19] On November 18, 2019, NASA added five contractors to the group of companies eligible to bid to deliver large payloads to the lunar surface under the CLPS program: Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation, SpaceX, and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.

The contract, worth $75.9 million, was for Masten's XL-1 lunar lander to deliver payloads from NASA and other customers to the south pole of the Moon in late 2022.

Using a Nova-C lander, the mission would land a drill (PRIME-1) combined with a mass spectrometer near the Lunar south pole, to attempt harvesting ice from below the surface.

On February 4, 2021, NASA awarded a CLPS contract to Firefly Aerospace, of Cedar Park, Texas, for approximately $93.3 million, to deliver a suite of 10 science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023 (later delayed to 2024).

Their Nova-C lander was contracted to land four NASA payloads (about 92 kg in total) to study a lunar feature called Reiner Gamma.

[26] On July 21, 2022, NASA announced that it had awarded a CLPS contract (8th, not counting OrbitBeyond) worth $73 million to a team led by the company Draper.

On March 14, 2023, NASA awarded Firefly a $112 million task order (8th CLPS contract, not counting OrbitBeyond or Masten Space Systems) for a mission to the far side of the Moon using the second Blue Ghost lander, expected to launch in 2026.

[7] The first landers and rovers will be technology demonstrators on hardware such as precision landing/hazard avoidance, power generation (solar and RTGs), in situ resource utilization (ISRU), cryogenic fluid management, autonomous operations and sensing, and advanced avionics, mobility, mechanisms, and materials.

As NASA's need to send payloads to the lunar surface (and other cislunar destinations) arises, it will issue Firm-Fixed Price 'task orders' on which the approved prime contractors can bid.

[12] On July 29, 2019, NASA announced that it had granted OrbitBeyond's request to be released from this specific contract, citing "internal corporate challenges.

"[38] On November 18, 2019, NASA added five new contractors to the group of companies who are eligible to bid to send large payloads to the surface of the Moon with the CLPS program.

[20] On April 8, 2020, NASA selected Masten Space Systems for a mission to deliver and operate eight payloads – with nine science and technology instruments – to the Moon's South Pole in 2022.

On February 4, 2021, NASA awarded a CLPS contract to Firefly Aerospace for a mission to deliver a suite of 10 science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023.

[57] The Lunar Explorer Instrument for space biology Applications (LEIA) science suite, is a small CubeSat-based device.