Will this be the year the U.S. finally operates a robotic rover on the moon?

For all its crewed lunar glory, the United States has never done something the Soviet Union, China, India and Japan already have: operate a robotic rover on the moon. That long-standing gap could soon close as a new wave of commercial lunar deliveries lines up a trio of U.S.-built rovers vying to be first—two as early as this year and another in 2026.

As NASA’s Artemis II mission unfolds, sending four astronauts on the first crewed lunar voyage since 1972’s Apollo 17, the nation’s status as the only country to have placed humans on the moon remains a point of pride. But in robotic exploration, the U.S. is a surprising underachiever.

The Soviet Union took the lead in 1970 with Lunokhod 1, the first of two successful Soviet rovers. China has since fielded two rovers, including Yutu-2, the first to operate on the lunar far side, where it still works today. India and Japan are members of the lunar rover club, too.

NASA’s VIPER rover is among several American designs preparing for potential voyages. Under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, one company came close last year to finally putting the U.S. on the board. Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) reached the lunar surface inside a lander built and operated by Intuitive Machines—but the lander touched down askew, trapping MAPP.

Other mobile payloads on that mission, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–built AstroAnt and Intuitive Machines’ surface-hopping Micro Nova craft, suffered the same fate. MAPP survived long enough to gather and transmit data, a sliver of success that engineers say yielded lessons for future attempts.

Those next attempts are already queued. Intuitive Machines plans to send another CLPS lander in the second half of 2026 carrying Lunar Vertex, a small rover designed to investigate the magnetic mysteries of Reiner Gamma, a prominent “lunar swirl” in Oceanus Procellarum on the moon’s near side.

Separately, a CLPS mission slated for the latter half of this year will see Astrobotic’s Griffin lander target the south polar region, delivering two rovers: Astrobotic’s diminutive CubeRover and Astrolab’s nearly 500-kilogram Flex Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP).

The south pole is a prime destination as companies and countries pursue the scientific and economic prospects of water ice. That sets up a three-way race among Lunar Vertex, CubeRover and FLIP to become the first American rover to successfully deploy and operate on the moon—assuming, that is, any of them manage to reach the surface.

The CLPS program has so far sent four landers to the moon, but only one of those—the rover-free Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1—has been considered a complete success. “Wow, it hadn’t occurred to me that Lunar Vertex could be the first U.S. robotic rover to operate on the moon.

Seems like a lot of responsibility!” says David Blewett of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the mission’s principal investigator. He notes the rover is based on Lunar Outpost’s MAPP and says MAPP’s brief operation “provided valuable risk reduction and lessons learned for Lunar Vertex.” If the upcoming deliveries unfold as planned, the United States could finally pair its human lunar legacy with a robotic first.

Whether the milestone arrives later this year or in 2026 will depend on launch schedules, safe landings and the rovers’ ability to roll.