Lunar Robots: NASA Spotlights Moon Base at 2026 FIRST Robotics Championship

At the 2026 FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston, NASA presented its plan for a permanent lunar outpost — Moon Base. The event brought together over 1,000 student teams and 51,000 participants.

Phase 1 of Moon Base focuses on a rapid series of robotic and uncrewed missions to scout and prepare for crewed Artemis landings. The target: up to 30 robotic lunar landings in 2027 under the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program, delivering rovers, drones, and hoppers.

NASA's exhibit showcased several key technologies. First — ARMADAS, a modular system of small robots and algorithms that can autonomously assemble large-scale infrastructure in space: solar panels, communication arrays, habitat modules. This reduces the need to launch fully built structures from Earth. Second — CADRE, a trio of small lunar rovers designed to explore autonomously as a team, collecting data no single robot could gather. Third — SkyFall Mars helicopters, successors to Ingenuity (72 flights in Jezero Crater), intended as aerial scouts for future crewed missions to Mars.

NASA has supported FIRST Robotics since 1996. This year, the agency sponsored over 160 teams, 50 of which had NASA mentors. A mobile machine shop at the championship helped teams repair their robots — NASA machinists completed over 600 jobs during the event.