For the second time in as many months, NASA is flipping the script and changing its planned activities for the moon. At the end of last month, the agency postponed its landing on the moon in the mission of Artemis IV while promising to complete the month’s tasks as quickly as possible. In this case, the agency said it is scrapping the Lunar Gateway, a lunar orbiter scheduled for launch in 2027, to build a base on the moon.
NASA officially unveiled the new program, called Ignition, during a 3-hour press conference on Tuesday. Ignition includes many plans for NASA’s immediate and long-term future, including replacing the International Space Station before it. becomes unusable in 2030, and building the “SR-1 Freedom,” a nuclear-powered spacecraft scheduled for launch to Mars in 2028.
“NASA is committed to accomplishing the near-impossible again: returning to the moon before the end of President Trump’s term, building a base on the moon, establishing a permanent presence and doing other things necessary to ensure America’s leadership in space,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in a statement.
The new moon program is expected to take place in three phases over the next few years. The first phase will be to replace the machines and “in a prototype way” to get experimental learning. The second phase will see the construction of “unmanned infrastructure” on the moon. The third phase will add permanent infrastructure to that lunar base.
NASA has not set a concrete timeline for any of these goals, but Isaacman said “the clock is ticking on this superpower race,” likely referring to China’s goal of putting humans on the moon by 2030. During a speech with various aerospace companies, international space agencies and Congress during an event at NASA headquarters, Isaacman said that the entire program will cost 20 billion dollars.
This new plan also includes halting the construction of the Lunar Gateway station. The orbiter has been in the works for years and has been criticized as a wasteful distraction from the real goal of returning humans to the moon. Isaacman pointed out that the orbiter will be repurposed for use on the lunar surface, which will undoubtedly come with its own set of challenges.
What else is NASA working on?
The launch came with other announcements, including that the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is ahead of schedule and under budget, the success of DART’s mission to change the trajectory of an asteroid by entering it, the ongoing Parker Solar Probe’s success in studying the sun and a number of additional projects starting between 2026 and 2030.
Much like when it was retooling the Artemis mission last month, NASA continues its mission to make things faster. And while the moon base and the Artemis mission are at the forefront of NASA’s current plans, according to Isaacman, thousands of ideas are being worked on behind the scenes.
“The whole point of today wasn’t to give you a bunch of great PowerPoints [presentations] and always wait for everything to come to fruition,” Isaacman said. “This is about action right now … We want to move.”
