| By Mike Gruss
At this week's Satellite 2026 show, there's been a steady drumbeat of news around the expected topics: sovereignty, optical communications, orbital data centers, direct-to-device and of course, artificial intelligence.
One question I love to ask conference attendees at any show is what they've heard that surprised them. "Nothing that surprised me …" is a common response.
But yesterday's news from NASA HQ, a few miles from the convention center where the Satellite show is held, surprised. There, at an event known as Ignition, the agency outlined a new direction for exploration in the next decade, centered around building a base on the moon, that was the talk of the conference yesterday afternoon.
It's a lot to break down but here are the basics on building a lunar base in three phases:
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Phase 1, (2026 to 2028) focuses on getting to the moon reliably and a significant increase in the cadence of lander missions through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. It will also search for potential base locations at the lunar south pole. -
Phase 2 (2029-2031) is the building of the base to include communications, navigation, power and other infrastructure, developing large CLPS cargo landers and supporting two crewed missions a year. -
Phase 3 (beginning in 2032) would include long duration human exploration on the moon with routine logistics missions and uncrewed cargo return missions from the moon.
Leaders also said: -
They plan to pause Gateway, the facility under development for the last several years that would operate in a highly elliptical orbit around the moon, intended to support crewed landings at the south polar region of the moon.
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They want to fly a nuclear propulsion demonstration mission to Mars as soon as 2028
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They are weighing an alternative approach to help establish commercial ISS successors.
I asked SpaceNews' Jeff Foust for help on how to think about all of this.
Collectively, what is the takeaway from these changes?
Administrator Jared Isaacman is seeking to put his imprint on the agency, and do so quickly. He has worked to rapidly diagnose what he thinks is wrong with NASA's approach to Artemis and then find ways to reshape them. The focus here is both urgency and sustainability: getting humans back to the moon by 2028 — and before the first Chinese crewed landing — but also in an approach that can effectively scale up in the long run.
Why did Tuesday's announcement feel like such a surprise?
Any one of the individual announcements made during the Ignition event, such as canceling the Gateway in favor of a lunar base, a nuclear electric propulsion demonstration mission and potential changes in NASA's approach to commercial space station development, would have been important on its own. Some were expected, like Gateway's termination. What was surprising was that they were all announced at the same time, with a lot of homework for the industry in the form of requests for information and draft RFPs to respond to. If it seemed like it was a little overwhelming, it was.
Much more to come in the next few weeks.
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