{"id":67417,"date":"2026-03-27T16:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T16:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/nasa-plans-20-billion-moon-base-cancels-lunar-station"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:13:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:13:46","slug":"nasa-plans-20-billion-moon-base-cancels-lunar-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/nasa-plans-20-billion-moon-base-cancels-lunar-station","title":{"rendered":"NASA Plans $20 Billion Moon Base, Cancels Lunar Station"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"ap-article-header-tag\"> <strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. <\/strong> <\/span>NASA is cancelling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to construct a $20 billion base on the moon\u2019s surface over the next seven years, its new chief Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency in December, made the announcement at the opening of a day-long event at NASA\u2019s Washington headquarters at which he outlined a raft of changes he is making to the agency\u2019s flagship moon program Artemis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,\u201d Isaacman told delegates at the event.<\/p>\n<p>The Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman and Vantor, formerly Maxar, was meant to be a space station parked in a lunar orbit. Repurposing the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDespite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives,\u201d Isaacman said.<\/p>\n<p>Lunar Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board the moon landers before descending to the lunar surface.<\/p>\n<p>The changes imposed by Isaacman on the flagship U.S. moon program in recent weeks are reshaping billions of dollars worth of contracts under the Artemis effort.<\/p>\n<p>That is sending companies scrambling to accommodate the extra urgency as China makes progress toward its own 2030 moon landing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ap-article-footer-note\">Find more news and analyses on <span class=\"ap-highlight-country\">Lesotho<\/span> on the <span class=\"ap-highlight-brand\">Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. NASA is cancelling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to construct a $20 billion base on the moon\u2019s surface over the next seven years, its new chief Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday. Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency in December, made [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":67416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[245],"class_list":["post-67417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-lesotho"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>NASA Plans $20 Billion Moon Base, Cancels Lunar Station - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Lesotho. 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