When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Credit: NASANASA is definitely thinking big on the moon.The U.S. space agency plans to build a crewed lunar base over the next decade or so via its Artemis program — and we just got a sense of that project’s impressive scope.”We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles, with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence on the moon,” Carlos García-Galán, the manager of NASA’s Moon Base program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., said during a press conference Tuesday (May 26).This NASA chart outlines the three major steps of NASA’s Moon Base program from 2026 through 2032, starting with unpressurized rovers and sorties, and ending with a permanent lunar base. | Credit: NASAThe base will be constructed over the next decade or so near the lunar south pole, which is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice. This precious resource has been accumulating for billions of years on the permanently shadowed floors of craters in the region, scientists say.AdvertisementAdvertisementNASA didn’t go into the moon base-planning process with a big footprint as a priority. Rather, it emerged naturally, as all of the envisioned elements started coming together in planners’ heads.”There’s no one spot that covers all the science, all the technology, all the habitation needs of the surface, and even within the local area, you have to consider the terrain,” NASA’s Nujoud Merancy, chief architect of the Moon Base program, said during today’s briefing.Artist’s impression of a NASA MoonFall drone helping to mark the perimeter of the agency’s planned lunar base. | Credit: NASA”So, you’ll have the habitats on the tops of the hills where they get sunlight,” she added. “Power systems — nuclear systems — need to be a kilometer or more away for the radiation protection, so all of these things, when you start putting them together, end up sprawling a little bit more like a city as you start building it out.”And scientists and mission planners still don’t know a lot about the lunar south pole, which is another reason for a settlement there to cover a lot of ground, according to García-Galán.AdvertisementAdvert …
