NASA accelerates plans to build permanent moon base

NASA has announced that it has cancelled a planned orbital space station to expedite its plans to build a permanent lunar base on the moon "landing by landing and incrementally" .

Announced on 24 March, the shift in focus is part of agency-wide strategies to hurriedly "achieve President Donald Trump's National Space Policy and advance American leadership in space", according to NASA.

The lunar base will feature three major stations according to the space agency, with a reported $20 billion allocated to the cause over the next seven years. It will use components from the now-cancelled Lunar Gateway, an orbital station that was designed to support moon missions.

"NASA is committed to achieving the near‑impossible once again, to return to the Moon before the end of President Trump's term, build a Moon base, establish an enduring presence, and do the other things needed to ensure American leadership in space," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

"If we concentrate NASA's extraordinary resources on the objectives of the National Space Policy, clear away obstacles that impede progress, and unleash the workforce and industrial might of our nation and partners, then returning to the Moon and building a base will seem pale in comparison to what we will be capable of accomplishing in the years ahead."

"We are shifting to a focused, phased architecture"

A rendering of the base shows astronauts walking on the moon's surface. Capsules are positioned in groups.

Solar panels, trucks, rockets and landers are all distributed around the base, while spacecrafts float in the distance.

According to NASA, the moon base will be built in three major phases.

The first phase will focus on building the frequency of missions and delivering rovers and utilities, such as power generation, to "build, test and learn".

The second phase will focus on establishing "semi‑habitable" infrastructure.

Finally, the third phase "will deliver heavier infrastructure needed for a continuous human foothold on the Moon", according to NASA.

The initiative is largely supported by the organisation's ongoing Artemis program, which is focused on returning humans to the moon for long-term habitation. NASA said several constraints to current strategies shifted their approach to the mission, such as a lack of intermediate testing "from a lunar flyby to a lunar landing".

"On the Moon, we are shifting to a focused, phased architecture that builds capability landing by landing, incrementally, and in alignment with our industrial and international partners," said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya.

This updated plan foresees astronauts' returning to the lunar surface in early 2028 according to the recently updated plan, called Ignition.

NASA is currently planning to launch the much-delayed Artemis II mission, which is designed to fly the first crewed mission around the moon in more than 50 years.

Recently, Dezeen spoke to one of the designers of the Artemis II spacecraft as well as NASA about its goals to return humans to the moon.

President Trump released the Ensuring American Space Superiority executive order in December 2025, which details "leading the world in space exploration and expanding human reach and American presence".

China is also working towards landing humans on the moon by 2030, which is in part, fueling a "geopolitical competition" between the two nations, according to Space.com.

In recent years, architects and designers have put forth proposals for lunar buildings as space slowly grows commercialised and more accessible to non-astronauts.

These proposals include a giant solar tower designed by Foster + Partners and inflatable moon structures by SOM.

The image is courtesy of NASA 

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