The US space agency is to invest US$20 billion to develop a base on the moon, while suspending its plans to create the lunar orbital space station known as Gateway, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday.
“The agency intends to pause Gateway in its current form and shift focus to infrastructure that enables sustained surface operations,” Isaacman said in a statement given during a day-long event at NASA headquarters in Washington.
“Despite challenges with some existing hardware, the agency will repurpose applicable equipment and leverage international partner commitments to support these objectives,” he said.
Photo: AFP
It is the latest shake-up at NASA in the wake of changes to the Artemis program, which aims to send Americans back to the moon and establish a long-term presence there, paving the way for eventual missions to Mars.
The Gateway orbital lunar station was meant to serve as a point of transfer for astronauts headed to the moon as well as a platform for research.
The suspension of the initiative is not entirely surprising: Some had criticized it as financially wasteful or a distraction from other lunar ambitions.
Putting it on hold would allow for the redirection of efforts and resources towards the construction of the base near the strategic south lunar pole, which was already a goal, Isaacman said.
NASA now plans to spend US$20 billion over the next seven years to construct the base over dozens of missions, “working together with commercial and international partners towards a deliberate and achievable plan,” he said. “There will be an evolutionary path to building humanity’s first permanent surface outpost beyond Earth, and we will take the world along with us.”
Meanwhile, the long-delayed Artemis II mission, which was originally due to take off as early as last month, is slated to lift off from Florida and venture to Earth’s natural satellite as early as Wednesday next week.
They would not land, but are instead on a mission to fly by, much as Apollo 8 did in 1968.
Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glober and Christina Koch — along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen — will carry out the approximately 10-day trip.
The odyssey would mark a series of firsts: The first time a woman, a person of color and a non-American would venture on a moon mission.
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