{"id":557933,"date":"2026-03-24T17:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T17:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557933\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T17:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T17:40:08","slug":"nasa-plans-20b-moon-base-but-pauses-lunar-space-station-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557933\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA plans $20B moon base, but pauses lunar space station project"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n

NASA is cancelling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to construct \u200ca $20 billion US base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years, its new chief Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Isaacman, who was sworn in at \u200bthe agency in December, made the announcement \u200bat the opening of a day-long event at NASA’s Washington headquarters at which he outlined a raft \u200bof changes he is making to the agency’s \u2060flagship moon program \u2060Artemis.<\/p>\n

“It should not really \u200csurprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told delegates at the \u2060event.<\/p>\n

The Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman and Vantor, formerly Maxar, was meant to be a space station \u200cin a lunar orbit. Repurposing the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple.<\/p>\n

“Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose \u200bequipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives,” Isaacman said.<\/p>\n

Lunar \u2060Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform \u2060and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board \u2060the \u2060moon landers before descending \u200bto the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

The changes imposed by Isaacman on the \u200bflagship U.S. moon program \u2060in recent weeks are reshaping billions of dollars worth of contracts under the Artemis effort.<\/p>\n

That is sending companies scrambling to accommodate the extra urgency as China makes progress toward its own 2030 \u2060moon landing. <\/p>\n

\"SpaceThe Gateway space station hosts the Orion spacecraft in a polar orbit around the Moon in an artist’s conception from NASA. The orbiting space station project has been paused, NASA announced Tuesday. (Alberto Bertolin\/NASA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-557933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}