Plus: U.S. Space Command begins its move to Alabama
| Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, NASA halted work on Gateway to pursue a lunar base, Space Command begins its move to Alabama, the Space Force weighs options in the face of Vulcan delays and more.
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| | | | | OUR TOP STORY
| | By Jeff Foust NASA is halting plans to develop the lunar Gateway and instead focusing on the development of a lunar base.
During an event at NASA Headquarters March 24, agency officials outlined major changes to its Artemis lunar architecture, including plans to spend $20 billion over seven years on a lunar base.
"Starting today, we're building humanity's first deep space outpost," said Carlos Garcia-Galan, program executive for NASA's moon base effort.
The lunar base will take place in three phases. Phase 1, running from 2026 to 2028, "is all about getting to the moon reliably," he said. That includes a significant increase in the cadence of lander missions through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services and other programs. It will also focus on developing enabling technologies and getting "ground truth" for potential base locations at the lunar south pole.
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| | | | | | | CIVIL
| | The Office of Space Commerce has rolled out its proposal for a "light touch" approach to mission authorization, the latest attempt in a long-running effort to regulate new commercial space applications.
NASA announced a mission called Space Reactor 1 (SR-1) Freedom as part of the agency's "Ignition" event March 24. That spacecraft, launching at the end of 2028, would use a nuclear electric propulsion system to go to Mars.
Nearly 140 million euros ($162 million) that European Space Agency member states allocated to a program to support launch vehicle development remains in limbo and could be lost.
| | MILITARY
| | U.S. Space Command is beginning a phased move to Alabama while laying the groundwork for a permanent headquarters expected to be completed by 2031, according to testimony from its top commander, Gen. Stephen Whiting.
Electronic warfare is a growing threat to U.S. space systems, according to a March 23 unclassified briefing by U.S. Space Force Chief Master Sergeant Ron Lerch, senior enlisted advisor to the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence.
U.S. Space Force officials are working to reshuffle launch plans for a slate of national security missions after United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket was sidelined by a booster anomaly that could take months to resolve. | | | | | | | COMMERCIAL
| | In March 25 testimony at a hearing of the House Science Committee's space subcommittee, Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation, said a potential revamp of NASA's plans to shift from the International Space Station to commercial stations was creating confusion among industry.
Astronstone, one of China's younger launch startups, has secured new funding as it builds toward the first flight of its reusable AS-1 rocket. The funding will be used for rocket final assembly and testing, validation of "chopstick" recovery technology, expansion of rocket production capacity and team growth.
Japanese company ispace is revising its lunar lander design and further delaying the first mission by its American subsidiary while also unveiling plans for a lunar satellite constellation. | | | | | |  | | SPONSORED CONTENT
| | By Voyager Technologies The conversation around humanity's return to the moon is often viewed through launches, landers and national programs. But, industry leaders say that framework is becoming outdated.
Instead, they point to the emergence of a permanent infrastructure layer — habitats, logistics nodes, power systems and in-space computing — connecting low Earth orbit (LEO), cislunar space and the lunar surface into a single operational architecture. | | | | | FROM SPACENEWS |  | | March 31 at 1 p.m. ET: Join SpaceNews and Star Catcher, in partnership with the Commercial Space Federation, for a conversation on the energy and computing needs driving the push toward orbital data centers, where there are gaps and where there are opportunities and what comes next in this fast-moving field. Register now. | | | | | |  | Latest Press Releases
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