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 near the equator, where sunlight was reliable and terrain was flat. Artemis is aimed at the opposite kind of ground: the region around the lunar south pole, where craters that never see sunlight are cold enough to trap water ice for billions of years, beside ridges that catch long stretches of light — resource and power in the same neighbourhood. [1]
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 sequence on 27 February 2026 rather than delay the whole program waiting on either one, and on 24 March announced its intent to pause Gateway. [4] [6]
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 contributions from NASA, ESA, JAXA, the CSA and the UAE. On 24 March 2026 NASA said it intends to pause Gateway in its current form and shift to infrastructure for sustained surface operations, repurposing applicable equipment. [6] In April 2026 NASA stopped work on the HALO habitation module, whose contract had grown to $1.9 billion while corrosion was being repaired; [7] in August NASA said HALO power and avionics hardware is being repurposed for technology payloads bound for the lunar surface. [8]
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 either one slipping.
Fourteen Earth days without the Sun
Over most of the Moon a day-night cycle lasts about 29.5 Earth days — roughly two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of cold darkness. [11] Even the best-lit polar ridges spend some of the year in shadow, so solar power alone can’t carry a permanent base. 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.
Sources cited throughout this guide
Bracketed numbers in the text above correspond to the sources below.