NASA to spend $20 billion on moon base - Cancels investments for lunar station in orbit
NASA is canceling plans to put a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to build a $20 billion base on the moon's surface over the next seven years, director Jared Isaacman said.
Isaacman, who took office in December, made the announcement at the opening of a day-long event at NASA headquarters in Washington, in which he outlined a series of changes he is making to the agency's flagship moon program, Artemis.
"It should come as no surprise to anyone that we are stopping Gateway in its current form and focusing on the infrastructure that supports sustainable operations on the lunar surface," Isaacman said.
The Lunar Gateway, already largely under construction with contractors Northrop Grumman and Vantor, formerly Maxar, was intended to be a space station parked in lunar orbit. Repurposing the spacecraft for a base on the lunar surface is not straightforward.
"Despite some very real equipment and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and the commitments of international partners to support surface and other program objectives," Isaacman said.
The Lunar Gateway was designed to serve as a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board lunar landing craft before descending to the lunar surface.
Changes imposed by Isaacman on the main US moon program in recent weeks are reshaping contracts worth billions of dollars under the Artemis effort.
This is causing companies to try to accommodate the additional urgency as China makes progress towards its moon landing in 2030.
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