NASA has cancelled plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to construct a US$20 billion base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years.
NASA chief Jared Isaacman made the announcement at the opening of a daylong event at NASA’s Washington headquarters, at which he outlined changes he is making to the agency’s flagship moon programme, Artemis.
“It should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told delegates at the event.
The Lunar Gateway station was largely already built, with contractors Northrop Grumman and Vantor, formerly Maxar, which was intended to be a space station parked in a lunar orbit.
Isaacman said the repurposing of the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple.
"Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives," Isaacman said.
Lunar Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board the moon landers before descending to the lunar surface.
These changes imposed by Isaacman on the flagship U.S. moon program are reshaping billions of dollars' worth of contracts under the Artemis effort.
This will send companies scrambling to accommodate the extra urgency as China makes progress toward its own 2030 moon landing.
