NASA will provide an update about its moon base plans this afternoon (June 30), and you can watch it live.
Agency chief Jared Isaacman and Carlos García-Galán, the manager for NASA’s moon base program, “will discuss the next set of awards for new lunar lander missions and preview upcoming opportunities as the agency works toward building a sustained presence on the moon,” NASA officials wrote in a media advisory.
The event will begin today at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency.
The moon base is a core piece of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around Earth’s nearest neighbor over the next decade or so.
The Artemis architecture previously called for the assembly of a small space station in lunar orbit called Gateway. In late March, however, Isaacman announced that NASA was pausing its Gateway plans and instead focusing on building a surface outpost.
That base will be constructed near the lunar south pole, which is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice, a key resource that can be used for life support and also be split into hydrogen and oxygen to provide rocket fuel.
Construction of the base will require a variety of work by robotic lunar rovers and landers. Presumably, today’s press conference will shine some more light on that work and reveal which companies will be contracted to do it.
NASA has launched two Artemis missions to date. Artemis 1 sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back in late 2022, and Artemis 2 launched four astronauts around the moon this past April.
NASA is currently gearing up for Artemis 3, a crewed mission that will test docking procedures between Orion and one or two privately developed lunar landers in Earth orbit.
The agency aims to launch Artemis 3 in mid-2027. If all goes well with that flight, Artemis 4 will land astronauts near the lunar south pole, potentially as early as late 2028.