Nasa to spend $20bn on moon base after cancelling orbiting station | Nasa
NASA is canceling plans to deploy 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, its new chief, Jared Isaacman, said Tuesday.
Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency in December, made the announcement at the opening of a daylong event at NASA headquarters in Washington, during which he outlined changes he is making to the agency’s flagship lunar program, Artemis.
“It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that we are suspending Gateway in its current form and focusing on the infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told delegates at the event.
The Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman and Lanteris Space Systems, owned by Intuitive Machines, was intended to be a space station stationed in lunar orbit. Repurposing the craft for a base on the lunar surface is not simple.
“Despite some very real material and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and commitments from international partners to support surface program and other objectives,” Isaacman said.
Lunar Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board lunar landers before descending to the lunar surface.
Isaacman’s changes to the flagship U.S. lunar program in recent weeks reshape billions of dollars of contracts under the Artemis effort.
That has companies scrambling to meet the added urgency as China advances toward its own moon landing by 2030.
