NASA chief Jared Isaacman outlines first steps for ‘moon base’

(Nexstar) — Extra-terrestrial investments by NASA and private companies are spurring economic growth across the U.S., according to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

The NASA chief joined the agency in December 2025, amid a push to return humanity to the moon and beat China in a race to the surface.

Earlier this year, Isaacman announced plans to build a “moon base.” The project would fulfill a mandate by Congress, to establish a permanent presence either in the moon’s orbit or on the lunar surface.

Isaacman hoped to launch parts of the base this year. But an explosion of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket delayed some of the deliveries to the surface of the moon.

“I don’t really consider it much of a setback,” Isaacman said in an interview. “We’ve always been looking toward 2027. That’s where you get in a rhythm, that’s when you get into that monthly cadence of putting landers and rovers on the moon.”

NASA will drop rovers, drones and experiments on the south pole of the moon in the first series of the moon base missions. Isaacman said he hopes they’ll be ready by the time the U.S. returns astronauts to the moon .

“By Artemis IV, when our astronauts land on the surface of the moon, they’re already going to have some of the infrastructure and rovers there waiting for them,” he noted.

The moon base, Isaacman continued, will help NASA learn how to live away from Earth, and possibly later to Mars and other planets.

And, he said, private companies are getting involved. SpaceX has set up “space ports” in Texas and Louisiana. Isaacman added that the space industry is also growing in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

“This is, I think, very analogous to the first stops on the rail line that led to some of our biggest cities or some of the first airports and seaports — a whole community and economy built around it,” he said. “I think we’re going to see the same with our space ports.”

Isaacman explained that NASA will launch several moon base missions next year, with the aim to launch Artemis IV in 2028, returning astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than half a century.