NASA Commits $20 Billion To Build Permanent Moon Base, Aiming To Land Astronauts By 2028

NASA announced a major shift in its lunar strategy by abandoning its project of station spatiale en orbite and committing 20 milliards de dollars to build a permanent base à la surface de la Lune.

The change “annule de fait le projet Lunar Gateway sous sa forme actuelle,” with elements partially built to be reallocated to surface infrastructure under the programme Artemis.

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NASA’s chief Jared Isaacman said the decision reflected “l’importance accordée aux opérations durables sur la Lune plutôt qu’aux systèmes de soutien orbitaux,” and the agency’s goal is to make it land astronauts on the lunar surface d’ici 2028.

The overhaul could affect international partners, including l’Agence spatiale européenne, as well as le Japon et le Canada, which had committed to the station Gateway.

In parallel, NASA revealed ambitions to send a nuclear-propulsion spacecraft, “Space Reactor 1 Freedom,” to Mars before the end of l’année 2028, to test advanced nuclear propulsion and deploy helicopters for exploration.

NASA said it will begin with three uncrewed Moon Base missions this year to kickstart construction of a $20bn moon base, and it chose Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the first mission.

At a press conference in Washington DC, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the three missions planned for 2026 would be followed by “more than a dozen” more in the coming years to test systems and equipment.

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Isaacman said “Moon Base One will be the first privately funded lunar lander mission in history,” using Blue Origin’s cryogenically propelled cargo lander Endurance to land at the Shackleton de Gerlache Ridge area of the moon’s south pole.

NASA also announced that it has awarded Astrolab $219 million and Lunar Outpost $220 million to build and deliver the first phase of lunar terrain vehicles, and it said Firefly Aerospace won a $75 million contract to build four drones for Moonfall.

NASA’s Moon Base plan is tied to Artemis, with the BBC reporting that the US wants to land Americans back on the Moon before President Donald Trump leaves office in 2028, while China aims to land humans by 2030.

NASA’s next steps include robotic landers, hopping drones and vehicles it aims to send to the Moon as part of US plans to build a lunar base, with Blue Origin among the companies picked to build the machines.

The BBC reported that NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the announcements mean the US will “never give up the Moon again,” and it described a base that would allow scientific experiments, potentially mine valuable resources, and travel to Mars more easily.

NASA’s Ignition Moon Base programme is described as having three phases, with robotic exploration lasting until 2029 and including 25 launches and 4 metric tonnes of cargo landed on the Moon, according to Carlos García-Galán.

The BBC also said the plan includes delivery vehicles to drive astronauts over the lunar surface and carry communications and scientific instruments, and it described Endurance’s role in precise landings, autonomous navigation and control.

Lunar scientist Dr Simeon Barber told BBC News that “It would not surprise me at all if China gets there first,” citing NASA’s setbacks in securing a craft that can land humans on the Moon.