Moon bases, Moon mining and telescopes on the far side

The Artemis plan (as of late 2026)

• Artemis II, April 2026 (done): four astronauts flew around the Moon and back.
• Artemis III, planned 2027: a crewed rehearsal in Earth orbit. Orion will meet and dock with test versions of the commercial Moon landers, SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon, to test docking, life support, communications and spacesuits before anyone lands.
• Artemis IV, planned 2028: the first crewed landing since 1972, in the south pole region. Astronauts will move from Orion into a commercial lander; NASA will choose the lander that is ready first.
• Artemis V and beyond: more landings, longer stays, and the first pieces of a permanent surface base.

NASA reshaped the plan in 2026. Artemis III used to be the first landing; it is now a test flight, so that the landers can be proven in Earth orbit first. Dates in spaceflight often slip, so treat these as targets.

From an orbiting station to a base on the ground

For years the plan included Gateway, a small space station that would orbit the Moon and act as a stopover. In March 2026 NASA announced it would pause Gateway in its orbital form and put the money and hardware towards a base on the surface instead, built in phases over the coming decade.

International partners are part of that base. Plans announced include a pressurised rover from Japan, in which astronauts could drive for weeks without spacesuits, habitat modules from Italy, and a lunar utility vehicle from Canada. Companies are also building unpressurised Lunar Terrain Vehicles, the successors to the Apollo moon buggy.

Why the south pole? Some crater rims there get sunlight for most of the year (great for solar power), the nearby shadowed craters hold water ice, and the temperatures on the sunlit ridges are steadier than at the equator.

Living on the Moon is hard

• Radiation: the Moon has no magnetic field and no air, so cosmic rays and solar storms hit the surface. Habitats may be buried under regolith or placed in lava tubes.
• Dust: lunar dust is sharp, clingy and electrically charged. It scratched Apollo visors, clogged seals and irritated astronauts' lungs.
• Temperature: from about +120 °C in sunlight to −130 °C at night, and two-week-long nights away from the poles.
• Low gravity: one-sixth of Earth's. Nobody yet knows what living in it for months does to the human body.

Living off the land: Moon mining

Engineers call it ISRU: in-situ resource utilisation, using what you find where you are. Every kilogram not launched from Earth saves a lot of money.

• Oxygen from rock. About 40 to 45% of the mass of moon soil is oxygen, locked inside minerals. Heating soil with hydrogen or carbon, or melting it and running electricity through it, can release it.
• Water ice from the polar craters, for drinking, oxygen and rocket fuel.
• Building material. Regolith can be sintered with sunlight or microwaves, or 3D printed into landing pads, walls and radiation shields.
• Metals such as iron, titanium and aluminium are in the soil too, but extracting them is much harder.
• Helium-3 from the solar wind is often mentioned as a future fusion fuel. It is real but extremely dilute (parts per billion), and the fusion reactors that could use it do not exist yet.

Telescopes on the far side

The far side of the Moon is the radio-quietest place we can reach. The Moon itself blocks all the radio noise from Earth: TV, phones, radar and the natural radio glow of Earth's upper atmosphere.

That would let astronomers listen at very low radio frequencies that cannot get through Earth's atmosphere at all, to study the cosmic dark ages, the time before the first stars switched on.

• Already done: the Queqiao relay satellite for China's Chang'e 4 carried a Dutch-Chinese low-frequency radio experiment beyond the far side in 2018.
• Planned: LuSEE-Night, a NASA and US Department of Energy radio experiment, is due to land on the far side on Firefly's Blue Ghost 2 lander.
• Dreams: the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope concept would hang a wire-mesh dish about a kilometre across inside a far-side crater, using robots.

The new Moon race

• United States and partners: Artemis, with astronauts from Canada, Europe and Japan promised seats. NASA's CLPS program pays private companies to deliver science to the surface.
• China: aims to land its own astronauts before 2030, using the new Long March 10 rocket, the Mengzhou spacecraft and the Lanyue lander. Chang'e 7 (south pole, now expected in 2027) and Chang'e 8 lead to an International Lunar Research Station with Russia and other partners in the 2030s.
• India: after Chandrayaan-3, plans a sample-return mission (Chandrayaan-4) and a joint polar mission with Japan.
• Japan and Europe: Japan's pressurised rover and astronauts on Artemis; ESA's Argonaut cargo lander for the 2030s.
• Companies: Intuitive Machines, Firefly, ispace, Astrobotic, Blue Origin, SpaceX and others are building landers, rovers and relay satellites.

Rules for a crowded Moon

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says no country can claim the Moon. The US-led Artemis Accords (78 countries had signed by the end of October 2026) add principles for peaceful cooperation, sharing data, avoiding interference and protecting historic sites like the Apollo landing areas. China and Russia have not signed and are building their own partnership.