NASA has decided how much it will spend to build a base on the Moon in the next 7 years and abandons the “Lunar Gateway” program
NASA announced on Tuesday that it is abandoning plans to build a space station to orbit the moon and will use resources allocated to the project to build a $20 billion base on the moon's surface over the next seven years, Reuters reports.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, who became NASA's new chief in December, made the announcement at the opening of a day-long event held at the US space agency's Washington headquarters. Isaacman presented at the event a wide range of changes he has decided on for the Artemis program, which is intended to return American astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time since the legendary Apollo missions ended decades ago.
“It should come as no surprise to anyone that we are decommissioning Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure to support sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told event attendees.
The Lunar Gateway Station, largely already built on Earth with the help of contractors Northrop Grumman and Vantor, was to be a space station placed in orbit around the Moon. Reconfiguring this platform to become a base on the surface of the Moon will not be a simple process.
NASA chief talks international partners for Artemis program
“Despite very real hardware and timing challenges, we can reuse equipment and commitments from international partners to support surface and other program objectives,” Isaacman said.
The Lunar Gateway was designed as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board lunar landing modules before descending to the lunar surface.
Isaacman's changes in recent weeks to the flagship lunar program of the United States withdraw billions of dollars worth of contracts from the Artemis initiative.
This prompts the companies involved to mobilize quickly to deal with the new emergency as China makes progress towards its own satelliteization mission, planned for 2030.
