NASA Halts Lunar Gateway, Prioritizes Moon Surface Base

Overview

• NASA, which announced the change Tuesday at a Washington event, said it will pause the Gateway station as conceived and redirect resources to building on the lunar surface.
• New administrator Jared Isaacman set a target of a $20 billion surface program over seven years that reuses Gateway hardware and taps existing commitments from partners such as the European Space Agency.
• The plan starts with a surge of robotic work, with up to 30 landings from 2027 to deliver rovers, instruments, and technology demos for power, mobility, communications, navigation, and surface operations.
• Later phases add the first semi-habitable outposts and then larger infrastructure for longer stays, including multiuse habitats that the Italian Space Agency plans to supply.
• NASA also flagged a nuclear-electric craft called Space Reactor-1 Freedom for about 2028 to haul drones to explore Mars, a step that would support higher-power missions far from the Sun.