HORIZON
A FIELD GUIDE TO ARTEMIS BASE CAMP
Ten chapters on the plan to build humanity's first permanent lunar address — and on the very recent, very real pivot that reshaped how NASA intends to get there. Scroll to begin the mission.
BEGIN — CHAPTER 01 →Ice in the shadows, light on the ridges
Apollo landed on the equator, where sunlight was reliable and terrain was flat. Artemis is aimed at the opposite kind of ground: craters near the south pole that never see sunlight at all, cold enough to trap water ice for billions of years, sitting beside ridges that catch near-constant light — a rare pairing of resource and power in the same neighbourhood.
Water ice means drinking water, breathable oxygen, and — split into hydrogen and oxygen — rocket propellant, without hauling it all from Earth. That's the resource a permanent base is built around.
Five missions, one growing footprint
What changed in February 2026
With neither commercial lander ready for a Moon landing, NASA reshuffled the entire sequence rather than delay the whole program waiting on either one.
A space station, paused mid-build
Gateway was designed as a small lunar-orbit station — a staging point where astronauts would transfer between Orion and a landing craft, with modules contributed by NASA, ESA, JAXA, and the CSA. In March 2026, NASA paused it in its current form, redirecting funding and hardware toward the surface base instead — a reflection of both technical delays and the urgency of a faster path to a lasting foothold.
A neighbourhood, not a single building
Current plans describe the base as a cluster of purpose-built elements rather than one habitat. Select a component.
A decade, built in layers
Two companies, two very different vehicles
NASA is relying on two competing, commercially built landers rather than a single government-designed one — a hedge against exactly the kind of delay both are currently experiencing.
Fourteen Earth days without the Sun
A lunar day-night cycle lasts about 29.5 Earth days — roughly two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of cold darkness, even near the pole's brightest ridges. Solar power alone can't carry a permanent base through that stretch. Step through the plan.
A plan is not a guarantee
Every major spaceflight program slips its early schedules, and a base camp with this many new, untested pieces has more than the usual number of ways to slip.
A rehearsal for Mars, if it works
Every system a lunar base has to solve — life support that runs for years unattended, power through two-week nights, resource extraction from local ice — is also, deliberately, a rehearsal for a much longer, much less forgiving trip to Mars.