Testing of the 2,789-pound Griffin-1 lunar lander began at JPL in July. The spacecraft remained on track as of September to launch no earlier than November, according to NASA’s Moon Base program manager.

The spacecraft traveled across the country from Voyager Lunar Systems’ manufacturing facilities in Pittsburgh to JPL in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Engineers placed Griffin-1 on a special spinning table to measure how its mass is distributed. The test helps them identify unexpected wobbles and assess how the lander will move through space.

Griffin-1 is part of a series of landers intended to demonstrate technologies for NASA’s Moon Base program. NASA plans to have the base’s initial elements in place by 2030.

Carlos García-Galán, who oversees NASA’s lunar surface base initiative, said the program’s first phase runs through 2029. During that period, NASA plans to focus on technology demonstrations and scout for a base site.

The agency expects those early spacecraft to be spread across hundreds of square miles. According to García-Galán, multiple landings would test landing reliability and collect information from different locations, helping NASA assess lighting, temperatures and direct communication with Earth. A second phase would focus on building infrastructure.

Astrobotic unveiled Griffin Mission One, also called Griffin-1, at its Pittsburgh headquarters on June 15. NASA had recently designated the lander Moon Base II.

After separation from its launch vehicle, Astrobotic plans to operate Griffin-1 from its Mission Control Center in Pittsburgh. Controllers would oversee the journey to the Moon, landing and payload work on the surface.

Griffin was one of four landers NASA had planned to send to the lunar surface in 2026. García-Galán said on Sept. 15 that Blue Origin’s Mark 1 Endurance and Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity were slated to launch in the first part of 2027, while Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 2 was scheduled to launch later that year.

García-Galán said Griffin-1 is planned to land at Mons Mouton, a high point near the lunar south pole. According to García-Galán, Griffin-1 is to carry Astrolab’s robotic FLIP rover to test hardware for a future crewed rover; the mission would also seek ground-truth data from the lander.

As of Sept. 15, García-Galán said Nova-C was in final assembly and had been powered on ahead of its planned trip to the Reiner Gamma area. He said Mark 1 was nearly fully assembled. Blue Origin senior director of civil space Jacki Cortese said its next milestone was fueling for a test before enclosing the lander for launch.

NASA and Blue Origin officials attributed Mark 1’s delay to a May explosion involving a New Glenn rocket on its Florida launch pad. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in June that New Glenn remained the agency’s primary plan for launching Mark 1, while NASA assessed alternatives.