NASA's lunar Gateway space station is out. Moon bases are in

NASA is officially sidelining the long-planned lunar Gateway space station to focus its efforts on establishing a base on the surface of the moon.

The change comes as the agency continues to lay out its accelerated plan for returning astronauts to the moon and building a sustained human presence there as a part of the Artemis program. During an event announcing updates to its planned campaign of moon exploration on Tuesday (March 24), NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the pivot as part of a broader push to hone the agency's workforce, simplify program architecture, increase launch cadence and compete with China's lunar ambitions.

"We find ourselves with a real geopolitical rival, challenging American leadership in the high ground of space," Isaacman said. NASA has committed to landing astronauts back on the moon, "before the end of President Trump's term," Isaacman stated, and said the next step toward building a moon base is a pivot away from a space station in lunar orbit. "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."

Instead, NASA will concentrate on expanding its Artemis program surface architecture through crewed and uncrewed landers, rovers and habitats. In that light, existing Gateway hardware and international partner contributions will be repurposed wherever possible for surface systems or other program needs.

The announcement was made one week before NASA's targeted launch of Artemis 2, scheduled for April 1. It's the first crewed mission of the program, and will fly three NASA and one Canadian Space Agency astronaut on a 10-day flight around the moon. The mission is designed as a stepping stone toward a lunar landing and eventual permanent base.

NASA is targeting 2027 for Artemis 3 to test integrated operations of Orion and one or both of the program's current lunar landers in Earth orbit, and 2028 for the program's first lunar landing attempt on Artemis 4 — no longer including a Gateway rendezvous.

One of the reasons NASA is officially excluding Gateway from its plans is to the ease of its integration with lunar landers' ability to travel from the space station, down to the surface and back. Gateway was meant to be launched into what NASA calls a near rectilinear halo orbit around the moon, with an apogee far above the lunar surface that demanded tight fuel constraints for landers needed to traverse the distance.

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"Despite some of the very real hardware and scheduled challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives," Isaacman said. "It's worth pointing out that shifting NASA workforce priority to the surface, which has lots of advantages for safety, tech demonstration and science … does not preclude revisiting the orbital outpost in the future.

The new approach calls for an increased cadence of not only Artemis launches, but also support missions that will be needed to build out the infrastructure for astronauts on the moon's surface step-by-step through programs like the Human Landing System (HLS), Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and the Lunar Transit Vehicle (LTV). Isaacman says the lunar base will be developed in three phases through the end of the decade, and cost roughly $20 billion. These plans extend far beyond NASA's 2028 lunar landing schedule, and rule out — for now — the inclusion of an outpost in lunar orbit.

Phase one expands robotic and early surface lunar landings through CLPS, HLS and LTV to deliver rovers and landers for technology demonstrations. These missions will test things like power, communications and navigation systems needed for short-term crewed excursions.

The second phase introduces semi-habitable modules and routine logistics to enable longer-term missions, leaning on "significant contributions from our great partners, like JAXA's (Japan's space agency) pressurized rover," Isaacman said.

Phase three introduces permanent infrastructure, enabled by higher cargo capacity from commercial landing systems, with the goal of long-duration habitation modules and systems to support a sustained human presence on the moon.