NASA’s Moon program is undergoing a major revamp under the agency’s new leadership, and the lunar surface may be a busy place come next year.
Jared Isaacman recently revealed an ambitious plan to land missions on the Moon once every month in 2027, the NASA administrator said during a recent interview with SpaceFlight Now. The regular missions will be geared toward building a lunar base on the Moon’s surface, which will act as a laboratory for astronauts to develop ways to live beyond Earth’s orbit.
“If you’re building a Moon base and you’re going there to stay, you’re gonna need lots of missions to and from the Moon,” Isaacman said during the interview.
The upcoming missions will be part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which serves as an important element of the agency’s Artemis program. Under $2.6 billion in contracts, various companies are tasked with developing payloads and pulling off touchdowns on the Moon’s surface through 2028.
“I want landers on the Moon in the south pole on a monthly cadence starting in beginning of 2027,” Isaacman said. “There is a lot to build out there.” He then listed the type of infrastructure needed for the lunar base, such as navigation, communication, and power-generating equipment, including nuclear power and propulsion.
And NASA needs to start soon. The White House issued a recent executive order that instructs NASA to establish “initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030.” The purpose of the Moon base is to develop a long-term, sustainable presence of astronauts on the lunar surface to enable deep space exploration to farther destinations such as Mars.
In late February, Isaacman announced some major changes to NASA’s ongoing Artemis program. For starters, the agency is now planning on launching an additional flight in 2027 to attempt a rendezvous of the Orion spacecraft with commercial landers in Earth orbit before using them to land astronauts on the Moon.
NASA will now attempt to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028 and possibly even do it twice that same year, for the Artemis 4 and 5 missions, respectively. The accelerated flight rate goes hand in hand with preparing the lunar surface for the influx of visitors, which explains the need for monthly missions to the Moon.
Whether that’s achievable, however, is another issue. So far, four CLPS missions have launched to the Moon, and three of them managed to touch down on the lunar surface over the past two years. Landing on the Moon is no easy task, and private companies will need to step up their production of landers to keep up with NASA’s updated Artemis plans.
The Artemis 2 mission, the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket, is currently slated for launch in April.
Source: Gizmodo