"We will never let go of the Moon again": The US will build a permanent lunar base

BarcelonaAfter announcing a few weeks ago that the Artemis III mission would not take humans to the lunar surface as planned, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the agency's new plans on Tuesday to fulfill President Donald Trump's promise to reach our satellite before its Chinese rivals. The new plans involve delaying the lunar landing by a year from the initial forecast: the Artemis IV mission will now launch in 2028. Later, he announced, a permanent U.S. base will be built on the lunar surface. "Our goal this time is not flags or footprints, but to stay on the Moon," Isaacman stated during the public presentation of NASA's plan, which took place on Tuesday under the evocative title of Ignition (ignition). "We will not let go of the Moon again," he asserted.

The goal, then, is that after the Artemis missions, the United States will make "landings on the Moon every six months" to build this lunar base "in three phases." The US agency has finally dismissed the Gateway program, which it had agreed upon with the ESA (European Space Agency) and other countries to build a permanent base in lunar orbit. This orbital base will no longer be built, and instead, the United States will establish a base on the surface of Earth's satellite. But NASA has indicated that it wants international collaboration on this new infrastructure as well.

Isaacman, the man finally chosen by Trump to lead NASA, thus presented the reconfiguration of the Artemis program, which aims to return to the Moon some 50 years after the last mission, in 1972. The program began with the mission Artemis I, which successfully launched in 2022.

First separation since 1972

NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya announced Wednesday that Artemis II, the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years, is scheduled to launch next week, specifically on April 1. However, this mission will only orbit the Moon and will be dedicated to testing the Orion spacecraft. But it has a much more ambitious goal: "To break the Apollo program's record for the farthest distance a human crew has ever flown," Kshatriya said.

The next mission, Artemis III, was intended to put humans back on the lunar surface, but this time it will also orbit the Moon and conduct further tests. "We are following the same philosophy that took us to the Moon last century: each step must be big enough to prepare us for the next, but it must not take unnecessary risks," Kshatriya argued.

NASA's new plan is for Artemis IV to finally make this lunar landing, the first since 1972. This is scheduled for early 2028. Then will come Artemis V, planned for late 2028, and from then on, the landings on the Moon. For these periodic, distant missions, NASA says it is counting on spacecraft from SpaceX and Blue Origin, the private companies of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, respectively, which have contracts with the US government agency to build lunar landers.

And then will come the construction of the lunar base in three phases. The first will be "build, test, learn," they said, during which "the agency will increase the pace of lunar activity, sending RoversInstruments and technological demonstrations that will advance mobility, energy generation, communications, navigation, surface operations, and a wide range of scientific research." Phase two will be the one that "must establish an initial infrastructure" that would be "semi-habitable" and would have a regular logistical supply of "recurring operations" "incorporating significant international contributions, including the rover pressurized by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).

Finally, phase three should "enable long-term human presence" on the Moon, where a permanent base would be established. "This will include Multi-Use Habitats from the ASI (Italian Space Agency), the Canadian Space Agency, and opportunities for other contributions in housing, surface mobility, and logistics" from other countries, according to NASA.