NASA has launched its roadmap for putting a base on the moon.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, “The moon base will not appear overnight. We will invest approximately $20 billion over the next seven years and build it through dozens of missions,” CNN reported.
The base will be located near the lunar south pole and will have habitats, pressurized rovers, and a nuclear power system, according to CBS News.
The news was announced about a week before the launch of the Artemis II mission, which will see a spacecraft go around the moon. It could launch as soon as April 1. The first time an astronaut could set foot back on the moon could be in early 2028, CNN reported.
Isaacman said he hopes to have two moon landing missions a year to build the base, which will serve not only as a research compoent, it will also develop the technology needed for flights to Mars, CBS News said.
“This revised, step-by-step approach to learn, to build muscle memory, to bring down risk and gain confidence is exactly how NASA achieved the near impossible in the 1960s,” he said, speaking about the Apollo missions. “But this time, the goal is not flags and footprints. This time, the goal is to stay.”
He said the plans to build the Gateway space station are paused, with portions now being repurposed for the base. The station was supposed to be in a lunar orbit as a drop-off point to coordinate the delivery of cargo and people into space, CNN reported.
“Significant parts of exiting Gateway hardware and facilities can be directly repurposed to support near-term exploration objectives along with those orbital elements needed to support a surface-focused mission,” NASA Moon Base program executive, Carlos Garcia-Galan, said.
The agency will increase the number of robot landers that can deliver cargo and instruments to the moon’s surface with the hope of landings becoming monthly, according to CNN.
Another initiative that Isaacman announced was the Space Reactor-1 Freedom or SR-1 Freedom, which would use nuclear electric propulsion for the first time to get someone to Mars in 2028.
Some may be wary about using nuclear propulsion in a spacecraft, but, according to CNN, NASA’s program executive for Fission Surface Power, Steven Sinacore said, “I do think we will have to sensitize the public, or at least explain to the public what it is. Ultimately — it is safe. On the ground the reactor is off. There’s no radiation coming from it. It doesn’t actually turn on until you’re up in space, and that’s where the radiation comes from.”
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