NASA Unveils $20 Billion Moon Base Plan, Cancels Gateway Station to Fund Lunar Surface Settlement

On Tuesday, March 24, at a daylong event at NASA headquarters in Washington, the agency's administrator, Jared Isaacman, told the audience that "the moon base will not appear overnight." What he laid out next was the most detailed version yet of a goal NASA has never hidden: a permanent American presence on the moon, anchored near the lunar south pole.

The price tag is roughly $20 billion over the next seven years, to be spent across dozens of missions with commercial and international partners. Isaacman called it a deliberate and achievable plan. The money has a source of sorts. NASA is canceling the Gateway, the space station that was to orbit the moon, and repurposing its components and resources for the surface base. Reuters reported that Gateway was designed as a research platform and as a transfer point where astronauts would board landers for the trip down. Isaacman said work with international partners on the station will be paused.

The base will come in three phases. First, NASA will increase the number of lunar missions over the next few years, sending rovers and other technology to test mobility, communications and nuclear power generation on the surface. Second, rocket launches will deliver what the agency calls "semi-habitable infrastructure" and transportation, including rovers, to support recurring astronaut operations. Only after that will NASA bring in the heavier infrastructure that makes a long-duration human presence possible. To do much of this, the agency plans to lean on its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, in which it contracts privately managed lunar missions.

The pace is meant to rise sharply. NASA and its commercial partners have landed three robotic vehicles on the moon since 2024, and at least four more missions are planned for 2026. In 2027, the agency wants up to 30 uncrewed landings carrying cargo and science instruments. After the Artemis 5 mission, it aims to run crewed surface missions at least every six months, with the potential to go faster as capabilities mature. The announcement also revealed a new Mars mission targeted for 2028.

The overhaul is the latest reshaping of the lunar program under Isaacman, who took over in December as an appointee of President Donald Trump. Isaacman framed it in terms of rivalry. NASA, he said in a statement, is committed to returning to the moon before the end of Trump's term, building a base and establishing an enduring presence. He described a great-power competition with China in which "the clock is running" and success or failure will be measured in months, not years.

The human landing schedule is already in motion. Artemis, established during Trump's first term, aims to return American astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo ended in 1972. At the end of February, NASA said a landing is now targeted for no earlier than 2028 under Artemis 4. It also unveiled a revised Artemis 3, planned for 2027, in which a crew will fly an Orion capsule to Earth orbit and dock with at least one lander being developed by Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, or SpaceX, led by Elon Musk.

Before any of that comes Artemis 2, which could launch as early as April 1. Three Americans and one Canadian will fly a 10-day trip around the moon, lifting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop the 322-foot Space Launch System rocket. It will be the program's first crewed mission, and the first test of whether the schedule announced this week can hold.