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NASA is racing to establish a permanent human presence on the moon as the U.S. looks to beat China’s ambitions on the lunar surface amid intensifying competition in space.
The Trump administration’s push for a roughly $20 billion moon base marks a major shift in NASA’s strategy, moving away from plans for a lunar-orbiting space station and toward building infrastructure directly on the moon as a long-term foothold for deep space exploration.
“This time, the goal is not flags and footprints,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said as he outlined the plan. “This time, the goal is to stay.”
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“The reason you want to have a lunar base is that it acts as a focal point of our ongoing efforts to not just be around the Earth, but go into deep space,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society space exploration nonprofit, told Fox News Digital. “It’s like the reason that we have our base stations in Antarctica.”
Dreier said a sustained presence on the moon would allow the U.S. to store supplies, build out infrastructure and expand its capabilities over time in ways that are not possible with a station orbiting the moon.
NASA is racing to establish a permanent human presence on the moon as the U.S. looks to beat China’s ambitions on the lunar surface amid intensifying competition in space. (Austin DeSisto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The shift also reflects a recalibration of NASA’s earlier plans, which centered on the Gateway program — a proposed space station in orbit around the moon that had been a cornerstone of the Artemis program but faced delays, funding uncertainty and growing questions about its necessity.
Originally envisioned as a staging point for astronauts traveling to and from the lunar surface, Gateway was designed to serve as a communications hub and transfer point in orbit. NASA is now redirecting…
