NASA Weighs Meteor Strike Risks 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 disclosed asteroid strike on the Moon mean for plans to build a base there? His answer was that the agency is "giving a lot of thought" to meteor impacts, and that the hazards of the lunar environment will have to be built into any outpost.

The question came out of news revealed last month. A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a building, up to six storeys high, struck the Moon's surface in 2024. It left a crater about 728 feet wide and 141 feet deep. Scientists described the collision as a once-in-a-lifetime event, one that happens around every century.

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

NASA has some observational evidence of this. Earlier this year, during the Artemis II mission around the far side of the Moon, the astronauts aboard saw several flashes as small space rocks, known as meteoroids, slammed into the surface. Isaacman said the crew relayed observations back during the mission and that these gave NASA additional data to work with for the Moon base.

The plan itself is ambitious. NASA intends to land people on the Moon again in 2028 and to have a permanent base running by 2032, with a continual human presence and routine crew rotations. The project is meant to develop the technologies needed for deeper space voyages, including to Mars. Artemis III is scheduled to launch next year, with four crew members testing low Earth orbit docking procedures between the Orion spacecraft and commercial lunar landers built by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Isaacman said the hazards are part of why the design is not fixed. A fleet of lunar rovers will scout and map the surface and inform how the outpost is developed. "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. He added that NASA is not locking in the design for habitation modules today, and is instead doing its "science of survival" with many uncrewed robotic landers and demonstrations. Environmental factors that could be hazardous will be addressed, he said, in a logical, iterative way.

Blue Origin has a key role from the outset, and the plan leans heavily on its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. That rocket exploded on the launchpad during an engine-firing test at the end of May. Isaacman said he was impressed by the company's progress since. Blue Origin has been open about targeting the end of the year, he said, and is "moving with purpose." Whether it hits December or slips to January, he said, "they're breaking everyone's records."

Pressed on whether he would put money on a 2028 landing, Isaacman said NASA is putting taxpayer money on it, but in the most efficient and responsible way it can. He acknowledged "a monumental effort is ahead" and said the agency is "eyes wide open." The immediate task, he said, is to prepare Artemis III for launch while flying many Moon-based missions in parallel. He described the path as achievable, backed by a mandate, resources and stakeholder support. The next markers are New Glenn's return to flight around the turn of the year and the Artemis III launch next year.