NASA to spend $20 billion on moon base, cancel orbiting lunar station

NASA MoonBase plans robotic landings, rovers and infrastructure for sustained human presence

NASA is cancelling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and ​will instead use its components to construct a $20 billion ‌base on the moon's surface over the next seven years, its new chief, Jared Isaacman, said on Tuesday.

Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency ​in December, made the announcement at the opening of a ​day-long event at NASA's Washington headquarters, at which he ⁠outlined a raft of changes he is making to the agency's ​flagship moon program Artemis.

To build a sustained human presence on the Moon, we are building @NASAMoonBase, prioritizing surface operations and scalable infrastructure.

- Frequent robotic landings and mobility testing including MoonFall drones
- Starting in 2027 nearly monthly cadence of equipment and… pic.twitter.com/3T00Y450kO

— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) March 24, 2026

"It should not really surprise 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 event.

The ​Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman and ​Vantor, formerly Maxar, was meant to be a space station parked in a ‌lunar ⁠orbit. Repurposing the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple.

"Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and ​other program objectives," ​Isaacman said.

Lunar ⁠Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would ​use to board the moon landers before descending ​to the ⁠lunar surface.

The changes imposed by Isaacman on the flagship US moon program in recent weeks are reshaping billions of dollars' worth of contracts ⁠under ​the Artemis effort.

That is sending companies ​scrambling to accommodate the extra urgency as China makes progress toward its own 2030 moon ​landing.