NASA Weighs Meteor Hazards as It Plans a Permanent Moon Base by 2032

At a briefing at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Friday, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman was asked a pointed question: what does a recently revealed asteroid strike on the Moon mean for the agency's plans to build a base there? His answer was that planners are "giving a lot of thought" to meteor impacts, and that hazardous environmental factors will have to be accounted for in establishing an outpost.

The question had a specific origin. Last month it emerged that a comet or asteroid, roughly the size of a building up to six storeys high, struck the lunar surface in 2024. It left a crater about 728 feet wide and 141 feet deep. Scientists have called the collision a once-in-a-lifetime event, the kind that happens about once a century.

Isaacman leaned on that rarity. "Fortunately, that's a once-in-a-century type of an event," he said. But he added that much smaller meteor strikes occur on the lunar surface far more often. The Moon has no atmosphere to burn up incoming rocks, so they hit at high speed.

Some of the data on those smaller strikes came from the Artemis II mission earlier this year. As the crew travelled around the far side of the Moon, the astronauts saw several flashes as meteoroids slammed into the surface. Isaacman credited the crew and the observations they relayed back for adding to what NASA knows.

The broader plan is to land people on the Moon again in 2028, and to have a base running by 2032 that provides a continual human presence with routine crew rotations. The project is also meant to develop technologies for deeper space voyages, Mars among them. Before any of that, Artemis III is scheduled to launch next year, with four crew members testing low Earth orbit docking between the Orion spacecraft and commercial lunar landers built by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Isaacman said the hazard question is one reason NASA is not fixing habitat designs yet. A fleet of lunar rovers will scout and map the surface to inform the outpost's development. "We're going to learn and we're going to gradually scale up capabilities because I guarantee you we're going to need surface improvement," he said, describing a "science of survival" built on many uncrewed robotic landers and demonstrations. Environmental hazards, he said, will be addressed "in a logical, iterative way."

Blue Origin's role is central, and its recent setback came up. The plans depend largely on the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, which exploded during an engine-firing test at the end of May. Isaacman said he was impressed by the company's progress, noting it has been open about targeting the end of the year. Whether it launches in December or slips to January, he said, "they're breaking everyone's records."

Pressed on whether he would put money on a 2028 crewed landing, Isaacman said NASA is putting taxpayer money on it, in the most efficient and responsible way it can. He acknowledged "a monumental effort is ahead" but called the path achievable, saying NASA has the mandate, the resources and stakeholder support. The near-term test is Artemis III next year, along with the stream of uncrewed Moon missions meant to run in parallel, and whether New Glenn returns to flight by around the turn of the year.