NASA announced Tuesday that it plans to build a permanent base on the surface of the moon over the next 10 years at a cost of roughly $30 billion.
Work on the Gateway Project, a planned space station that would orbit the moon and provide a launching pad for exploration of Mars and beyond, will be suspended as NASA refocuses its attention on the lunar base.
Jared Isaacman, a tech billionaire who became NASA’s administrator late last year, described the new plan — and the “great‑power competition” that shapes it — at the agency’s headquarters in Washington to an audience of lawmakers, international space agency officials and aerospace company representatives.
“There will be an evolutionary path to building humanity’s first permanent surface outpost beyond Earth,” Isaacman said. “America will never again give up the moon. That brings us to the next step: Building the moon base.”
Isaacman mentioned China, which plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030, calling the Asian nation “a real geopolitical rival, challenging American leadership in the high ground of space.”
A phased approach: NASA officials say the moon base will be built in three phases. In the first phase, lasting through 2028, the space agency will focus on increasing the tempo of moon missions from Earth, using rovers to determine a building site. In the second phase, through 2031, NASA plans to build “semi‑habitable infrastructure and regular logistics,” with contributions from other countries, including Japan. In the third phase, starting in 2032, NASA will build the heavy infrastructure needed for “a continuous human foothold” on the moon, with additional input from allied nations, including Italy and Canada.
Carlos Garcia-Galan, who was previously the deputy director of the Gateway Project and is now the manager of the moon base project, said the first two phases will take roughly seven years and cost $20 billion, per Space News. The third phase will run through at least 2036 and cost an additional $10 billion, bringing the total estimated 10-year cost to $30 billion.