NASA ramps up its effort to build a base on the moon and sets a timetable for the project

In: Science

The first missions toward building a base on the moon will launch before the end of the year, NASA leaders announced Tuesday.

“We are leveraging the NASA playbook from the 1960s, figuring out what works and what doesn’t in this epic science of survival,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters at a news conference, “because the moon base is as beautiful as it is hostile.”

The base will serve as an outpost for astronauts in the Artemis program who are working to help send humanity farther from Earth than ever before – eventually to Mars. I

The initial mission toward getting the base up and running is expected to partner with billionaire Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin – and is the first privately-funded lunar lander mission in history.

It will deploy an uncrewed lunar lander to test landing capabilities and deploy multiple science payloads at the moon’s South Pole by this fall.

NASA announced new steps in its plan to build a base on the surface of the moon. The base will act as a hub for Artemis astronauts
NASA announced new steps in its plan to build a base on the surface of the moon. The base will act as a hub for Artemis astronauts (NASA)

The second mission will be the largest commercial payload delivered to the lunar surface, including a rover from the company AstroLab, and the third will deliver a payload from the European and Korean Space Agencies.

Both are missions slated to launch by the end of the year. But Isaacman said they represent the first of more than a dozen that his agency will announce in the coming months.

NASA leaders also announced several other commercial partners involved in the effort. AstroLab and Lunar Outpost were chosen to develop lunar terrain vehicles. Astronauts will drive the AstroLab vehicles on the lunar surface.

“These things can go up to 10 kilometers per hour and go up and down slopes of 20 degrees,” said Carlos García-Galán, the program executive.

Lunar Outpost’s autonomous driving vehicles will map terrain to potentially find future moon base sites.

That’s a responsibility lunar drones carried by a Firefly spacecraft will share. Known as Moonfall, the drones will characterize the radiation environment, aid scientists in establishing a moon base perimeter and help to guide lunar landing and assess terrain .

“It will prospect for water and ice in the subsurface of the moon,” he noted.

Environmental testing of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander has been completed inside Thermal Vacuum Chamber A at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston,
Environmental testing of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander has been completed inside Thermal Vacuum Chamber A at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, (NASA)
This artist’s rendering shows MoonFall drone operating near the lunar South Pole
This artist’s rendering shows MoonFall drone operating near the lunar South Pole (NASA)

There will be 25 launches, 21 landings and 400 metric tons of cargo in the first phase of the moon base program.

All of the launches will help NASA transition to phase two: assembling semi-permanent infrastructure and early habitation by 2029.

“With the moon base, Artemis astronauts will stay longer, explore farther and conduct the kinds of science that advances exploration itself, understanding how humans operate off world, how we build infrastructure and how we prepare for Mars,” Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said.