Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

NASA has decided to suspend its Lunar Gateway project in its current form and shift its focus toward building a long-term base on the surface of the Moon, AzerNEWS reports.

The announcement was made by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman at a conference in Washington.

“No one should be surprised that we are pausing the Gateway project as it stands and redirecting efforts toward infrastructure that will support extended stays on the lunar surface,” he said.

Isaacman noted that, despite ongoing technical and scheduling challenges, the agency will reallocate resources originally intended for Gateway to accelerate lunar base development.

“A permanent presence on the Moon will not happen overnight. Over the next seven years, we plan to invest around $20 billion and carry out dozens of missions to make it a reality,” he added, describing the initiative as both “realistic and achievable.”

He also emphasized that NASA will collaborate closely with commercial companies and international partners—an approach that has already become a cornerstone of modern space exploration.

Interestingly, this shift reflects a broader change in strategy: rather than building infrastructure in orbit first, space agencies are increasingly prioritizing direct surface operations, which could speed up plans for future human missions to Mars.