NASA Unveils $20 Billion Plan for Permanent Moon Base Near Lunar South Pole

On Tuesday, in a series of meetings with contractors at NASA Headquarters in Washington, Administrator Jared Isaacman put a price and a timeline on a permanent human presence on the moon: about $20 billion over seven years, for a base near the lunar south pole with habitats, pressurized rovers and nuclear power systems. The announcement came just over a week before the planned launch of Artemis II, the around-the-moon mission.

Isaacman said he wants two moon landing missions a year, enough to establish semi-permanent astronaut occupation of the surface for exploration, research and the technology needed for eventual flights to Mars. He framed the plan against Apollo. A step-by-step approach, he said, builds muscle memory and lowers risk, as it did in the 1960s, but this time the goal is not flags and footprints. The goal, he said, is to stay. He said NASA intends to work with no fewer than two launch providers, aiming for crewed landings every six months, which goes well beyond the previously announced moon landings in 2028.

The plan reshapes the Artemis program. Over time it moves away from the government-owned Space Launch System rocket, which will carry the next several Artemis crews, toward competitive commercial rockets such as those being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. It also pauses the Gateway station planned for lunar orbit and repurposes its components for surface operations, in line with the Trump administration's national space policy calling for a moon base. The sequence follows a change Isaacman ordered a few weeks earlier: a low-Earth-orbit flight next year to test rendezvous and docking between Orion crew ships and the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers. Depending on the results of Artemis II and III, NASA now plans at least one and possibly two landings in 2028, Artemis IV and V, using one or both private landers.

Without Gateway, Orion astronauts will transfer directly to their landers. Gateway was meant to work around the limits of Orion's service module engine, which cannot get into and out of a low lunar orbit like the one Apollo crews used. What orbits might work instead was not addressed, and NASA is asking contractors to help find alternatives. Isaacman said the pause does not preclude revisiting the orbital outpost in the future.

The base will be built in three phases. Phase 1 replaces once-a-year missions with a templated approach, expanding landings to deliver rovers, instruments and payloads that test mobility, power, communications, navigation and surface operations. Phase 2 brings habitats and infrastructure for regular astronaut operations. Phase 3 delivers the permanent infrastructure to sustain a human presence: nuclear and solar power, crewed and uncrewed rovers including site-preparation machines, a cellphone-like communications network, a lunar GPS system, and constellations of observation and relay satellites. "The moon base will not appear overnight," Isaacman said, describing dozens of missions with commercial and international partners.

Nuclear power runs through the larger plan. NASA outlined systems to keep astronauts, habitats and equipment warm and supply electricity on the moon and Mars. First comes "Skyfall" in 2028, in which a fission reactor, Space Reactor 1 (SR-1), will power a nuclear-electric propulsion system carrying three small helicopters to Mars to scout a possible astronaut landing zone. SR-1 is to be the first of several nuclear technologies deployed on the moon in the next few years. NASA also pledged to keep encouraging commercial space stations for after the International Space Station retires around 2030, acknowledging that the ISS and commercial crew ships have not drawn the private interest once hoped for. Ideas include more privately financed non-astronaut researchers, "selling" commander slots to qualified non-astronauts, and using the ISS as an assembly base for private modules that could later fly on their own.

Isaacman said NASA can afford all of this with its existing budget by repurposing hardware and trimming waste. "NASA does not necessarily have a top-line problem," he said, adding that resources may not always be allocated efficiently. The history is costly: the Planetary Society estimates about $107 billion, in inflation-adjusted dollars, will have been spent on return-to-the-moon plans through 2026, largely because successive administrations changed course over two decades, from Bush's Constellation to Obama's asteroid mission to Trump's Artemis. Isaacman said the programs left behind were not success stories and that NASA owns the shortcomings.

He was blunt about China. If rivals reach lunar goals first, he said, NASA will not celebrate its adherence to excess requirements or process, and he warned to expect "uncomfortable action" if schedules slip or budgets are exceeded. The revised architecture clearly has White House approval. The next markers are the Artemis II launch, the results of Artemis II and III, the 2028 landings, and whether the money and schedule hold.