NASA announced on June 30, 2026, that it is considering sending PROMISE, an engineering test rover built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a stand-in for the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, to the lunar surface. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, announcing the concept alongside a batch of new lunar lander contracts, framed the pitch as a matter of hardware already paid for. “We’ve had years now of experience operating the two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we’ve got this hardware that the taxpayers have invested a lot in,” Isaacman said, according to Space.com. “So the question was posed: what if we send it to the moon?” He introduced the idea with a line borrowed from Yoda: “There is another.”