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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has big plans for the future of the agency, including the construction of a $20 billion lunar base that he said will establish an “enduring presence” on the Moon. Isaacman announced the news during NASA’s Ignition event on Tuesday, where he also described goals to launch a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars, as reported earlier by the New York Times.
As a result of plans to establish a base on the Moon, NASA announced that it’s pausing its Gateway project “in its current form,” which would’ve launched a space station orbiting the Moon. Instead, NASA plans to “shift focus to infrastructure that enables sustained surface operations,” and notes that it will “repurpose” some of the equipment that went into its Gateway project.
According to NASA, the agency aims to build the base in three phases, with the first involving the development of communications and navigation systems, along with the delivery of robotic landers and vehicles to help astronauts traverse the Moon. The next will involve “recurring astronaut operations on the surface” of the Moon, followed by the establishment of a “long-duration human presence,” allowing for the delivery of heavier infrastructure to create a permanent lunar base.
Isaacman didn’t provide a timeline for when the base will be complete, but said, “We will invest approximately $20 billion over the next seven years and build it through dozens of missions,” according to the NYT.
To build a lunar base hospitable for humans, NASA would have to contend with extreme high and low temperatures, dangerous space radiation, a low-gravity environment that could alter bone mass, muscle strength, and blood flow, as well as micrometeorites that constantly bombard the Moon.
President Donald Trump picked Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who has taken part in commercial space missions, to head up NASA in 2024 before pulling his nomination — and then choosing him again. During his second confirmation hearing, Isaacman emphasized the growing competition with China, which he said has the “will and means to challenge American exceptionalism” in space. Isaacman reiterated this urgency in a statement on NASA’s press release, saying “the clock is running in this great‑power competition, and success or failure will be measured in months, not years.” China similarly aims to bring humans to the lunar surface by 2030 and to build a base on the Moon. NASA has since pushed back its Artemis Moon landing mission to 2028.
In addition to a new Moon base, NASA also outlined plans to launch the Space Reactor-1 Freedom, which it calls “the first nuclear powered interplanetary spacecraft,” to Mars by the end of 2028. When it reaches Mars, NASA said the spacecraft will deploy a payload with helicopters that are similar to Ingenuity, the small, autonomous helicopter that completed the first powered, controlled flight on Mars in 2021.
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