With moon base and nuclear Mars mission, NASA wants you to ‘start believing again’.

In an image provided by NASA, an artist’s concept of Phase 3 of the proposed moon base. After years of talking about lunar outposts in vague terms for sometime in the indefinite future, leaders of the space agency on Tuesday put a continuing American presence at the moon solidly on their road map for the coming decade, setting out specific plans and timelines. (NASA via The New York Times) 

By KENNETH CHANG

NASA is getting serious about building a base on the moon.

After years of talking about lunar outposts in vague terms for sometime in the indefinite future, leaders of the space agency Tuesday put a continuing American presence at the moon solidly on their road map for the coming decade, setting out specific plans and timelines.

Jared Isaacman, who began serving as NASA administrator in December, portrayed the agency’s plans as important steps toward establishing civilization’s first foothold on another world over the next decade.

“There will be an evolutionary path to building humanity’s first permanent surface outpost beyond Earth,” Isaacman said in a keynote address that welcomed an auditorium full of representatives from aerospace companies, international space agency officials and members of Congress.

That, he said, would also inspire people growing up much as the Apollo moon landings did a half-century ago.

“This is the moment where we should all start believing again, when ideas become missions and when hard work delivers world-changing accomplishments,” Isaacman said. “NASA once changed everything, and we’re going to do it again.”

Isaacman is a billionaire entrepreneur who twice traveled to low-Earth orbit on space missions he financed. During his brief tenure at NASA, he has made a series of ambitious but reasonable announcements that appear to have the buy-in of both aerospace companies and key members of Congress.

He has also provided a measure of focus and stability at the agency during a period of turmoil and uncertainty at NASA. About one-fifth of NASA employees accepted offers to leave, part of efforts by the Trump administration to downsize the federal government.

He other NASA officials repeatedly said Tuesday they were trying to accomplish the “near impossible.”

He ticked off a list of other NASA objectives, including launching a nuclear-propelled spacecraft to Mars by the end of 2028.

And he made a passing reference to China’s accelerating space ambitions — “a real geopolitical rival, challenging American leadership in the high ground of space.”

China has said it planned to land its astronauts on the moon by 2030, while NASA’s Artemis return-to-the-moon program is aiming to return U.S. astronauts to the surface in 2028.

“The difference between success and failure will be measured in months, not years,” Isaacman said. “They may be early, and recent history suggests we might be late.”

The updated lunar plans come about a week before NASA hopes to launch astronauts around the moon and back for the first time since the end of its Apollo program in 1972. It is the second mission in Artemis, which started during the first Trump administration.

Last month, Isaacman announced an overhaul of the Artemis program. Instead of attempting a landing on the moon during Artemis III in 2028, that mission will now remain in orbit around Earth. It will also launch a year earlier. The mission will be devoted to astronauts practicing docking Orion, a capsule in which astronauts will travel to the moon’s orbit, with one or both lunar landers that are being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

If Artemis III goes well, that could set up two moon landing attempts in 2028 during Artemis IV and V.

Lori Glaze, the acting associate administrator of NASA’s exploration systems development mission directorate, said the pieces of the vehicles being used for Artemis III and Artemis IV were already coming together and could be ready to meet the accelerated schedule. She said NASA was also working with the companies to simplify the missions to avoid further delays.

On Tuesday, Isaacman said the pace of Artemis missions would speed up, from one every few years to twice a year after Artemis V. NASA put out a call for proposals by commercial companies to supplant the giant NASA-run Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule.

NASA is aiming to hire at least two companies for that task.

Plans for a moon base would proceed in three phases, Isaacman said. The first would seek to replace one-off bespoke missions with a “templated approach that will generate significant learning through experimentation,” he said.

That will include small robotic landers, the delivery of vehicles that can drive astronauts along the surface and the development of other systems like communications and scientific instruments.

The second phase will consist of “semi-habitable infrastructure” that will allow regular visits of astronauts on the lunar surface. The third phase would begin the construction of permanent infrastructure that would allow a continuing human presence there.

“The moon base will not appear overnight,” Isaacman said. To cover the first two phases, he said, “we will invest approximately $20 billion over the next seven years and build it through dozens of missions.”

Carlos Garcia-Galan, the program executive for the moon base, said the third phase would cost an additional $10 billion.

“At this point, we’re talking about 150,000 kilograms of payload on the surface,” he said during his presentation. That would include habitats, vehicles to carry astronauts and cargo across the surface, power and communication systems, and potentially nuclear power plants.

Work on Gateway, a small space station that had been planned to orbit the moon, has been suspended.

Garcia-Galan, who had been the deputy manager of Gateway, said much of the money and expertise that had been devoted to Gateway would be redirected to the moon base. In an interview, he said he had been working on the moon base concept for 3 1/2 weeks.

A part of the Gateway station that is almost complete will still go to space, but headed to a much farther destination. The station’s power and propulsion element will serve as the engine of the Space Reactor-1 Freedom, or SR-1 Freedom, a robotic spacecraft headed to Mars that will be powered by a nuclear fission reactor.

The Gateway element was designed to use solar panels to power the acceleration of xenon ions to provide thrust. For SR-1 Freedom, the source of electricity changes from solar energy to a reactor mounted at the front of the spacecraft. During this mission, the reactor is too small to speed the trip, but will demonstrate the basic technology for larger systems in the future.

“We are not trying to do everything,” said Steve Sinacore, the program executive for NASA’s fission surface power program. “We are trying to do the hard thing.”

SR-1 Freedom would demonstrate what could eventually be a faster way to get to Mars. Once it reaches the red planet, it will drop off a payload of three robotic helicopters similar to Ingenuity, which accompanied the Perseverance rover in 2021.

The helicopters will carry cameras and radar that will aim to find frozen water at a possible future landing site for astronauts.