NASA's ambitious plans to build a space station in orbit of the Moon are officially on hold, administrator Jared Isaacman said Tuesday, with the space agency instead skipping the orbital habitat in favor of building a permanent base on the Lunar surface.
Isaacman made the announcement during the opening keynote for NASA's Ignition Day event during which the space agency was providing updates on a number of Artemis-related initiatives and Trump's National Space Policy.
"It should not be much of a surprise that we intend to pause Gateway in its current form and focus on building lunar infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the surface," Isaacman told attendees. "We will pivot agency talent and hardware already working on Gateway to the surface or other programs."
However, suspension of the Gateway project - which would have resulted in the construction of the first space station outside of Earth orbit - may come as a surprise to NASA's international partners on the project, namely the European Space Agency, Canada, and Japan. All had discussed the project as an international effort to continue the partnership established on the ISS into the next frontier in space.
JAXA, the CSA, and ESA have already supplied components and systems for the Gateway, most notably the European-built HALO habitation module, which was delivered to NASA in April 2025, along with multiple modules constructed by ESA for inclusion on the now-mothballed space station.