NASA is canceling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to build a $20 billion base on the Moon's surface over the next seven years, the agency's new head, Jared Isaacman, said on Tuesday, UNN reports with reference to Reuters.
Details
Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency in December, made the announcement at the opening of a one-day event at NASA's Washington headquarters, where he outlined a number of changes he is making to the agency's flagship lunar program, "Artemis."
"It should come as no surprise to anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports stable operations on the lunar surface," Isaacman told delegates at the event.
The Lunar Gateway station, most of which has already been built by contractors Northrop Grumman and Vantor (formerly Maxar), was intended to be placed in lunar orbit. Repurposing the apparatus for a lunar base is not an easy task, the publication notes.
"Despite some very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose the hardware and international partnership agreements to support surface goals and other programmatic objectives," Isaacman said.
The Lunar Gateway station was designed as a research platform and transfer station that astronauts would use to board lunar landers before descending to the lunar surface.
The changes Isaacman has made to the flagship American lunar program in recent weeks are reshaping billions of dollars in contracts within the "Artemis" program, the publication notes.
This is forcing companies to hastily adapt to increasing urgency as China advances its own Moon landing in 2030, the publication writes.