Gateway: a station for lunar orbit, paused while its first modules were being built

Drawn from 22 sources: NASA (12), Spaceflight Now (2), SpacePolicyOnline (2), NASA Office of Inspector General and 5 others. About 8 minutes. Checked October 1, 2026.

Gateway was to be humanity’s first space station around the Moon: a small, NASA-led outpost, built with Europe, Japan, Canada and the United Arab Emirates, where astronauts would live and work in lunar orbit, transfer between Orion and their landers, and test what a sustained presence in deep space requires.¹ By early 2026 the power and propulsion module was about 90% assembled, and the living-quarters module was being outfitted in Arizona.^10,1

On March 24, 2026, NASA said it intends to pause Gateway “in its current form” and shift its focus to infrastructure that enables sustained operations on the lunar surface, repurposing applicable equipment and using its partners’ commitments toward a Moon Base.¹¹ Administrator Jared Isaacman said the decision did not preclude revisiting an orbital outpost in the future.¹² By October 2026, NASA had stopped most work on the living module, and the power and propulsion module had been reassigned to a nuclear-powered spacecraft bound for Mars.^10,15

A station for a seven-day orbit around the Moon

Gateway was designed to last at least 15 years as a small, human-tended station, about one-sixth the size of the International Space Station, with astronauts visiting rather than living aboard continuously. NASA planned it as a research platform, a staging point for human and robotic exploration in deep space, and a test bed for technologies needed at Mars.^1,2,5,10 Between visits it had to run itself: software called the Vehicle System Manager was to plan activities, manage resources, control the station and handle faults autonomously.¹

Its orbit was chosen with care. A spacecraft in low lunar orbit circles close to the surface every two hours; reaching the ground from there is simple, but because of the Moon’s gravity it takes more propellant to maintain the orbit. A distant retrograde orbit is large, stable and circles the Moon every two weeks, but makes it harder to get to the surface. Gateway’s near-rectilinear halo orbit, hanging almost like a necklace from the Moon, takes a week and is balanced between Earth’s and the Moon’s gravity. It periodically brings a spacecraft close enough for simple access to the Moon’s South Pole and keeps an uninterrupted line of sight to Earth for communications.²

The first two elements, the Power and Propulsion Element and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, called PPE and HALO, were to be joined on Earth and launched together on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, then spend a year spiraling out to that orbit. Astronauts would first enter Gateway on Artemis IV. Orion was to bring Europe’s I-Hab habitat with it on that flight, Europe’s Lunar View refueling module on Artemis V and the Emirati airlock on Artemis VI, each riding with the crew on the more powerful SLS Block 1B.¹

Power and propulsion: built to be the most powerful solar-electric spacecraft

HERMeS, the 12.5-kilowatt Hall thruster developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and JPL that became the flight thruster for Gateway’s propulsion module, firing in a Glenn vacuum chamber in 2015.

NASA

The Power and Propulsion Element is a 60-kilowatt solar electric propulsion spacecraft that was to supply Gateway with power, high-rate communications, attitude control, orbit maintenance and the ability to move between lunar orbits. It is built on a commercial satellite bus by Lanteris Space Systems, formerly Maxar, of Westminster, Colorado, which NASA selected in May 2019 under a contract worth $375 million including options. NASA then expected to launch it on its own in late 2022.^1,3 NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland manages the project.¹

HALO: a Cygnus-based cabin built in Turin and Arizona

Four partners built their share into the station

Gateway was the centerpiece of NASA’s effort to bring other nations into Artemis, and each partner’s contribution came with seats on the flights. ESA agreed in October 2020 to provide the Lunar I-Hab habitat, the Lunar View refueling module with six large windows, and Lunar Link, and to supply two more service modules for Orion. Japan agreed in December 2020 to provide I-Hab’s life support and thermal control, batteries and a cargo delivery on its HTV-XG spacecraft. Canada signed in November 2020 to supply Canadarm3, a robotic arm that would move end over end along the station and work with or without astronauts aboard. In January 2024 the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre of the United Arab Emirates agreed to provide the Crew and Science Airlock.^1,8 Astronauts from Canada, Europe, Japan and the UAE were to fly to Gateway. Canada’s 2020 agreement also gave it a seat on Artemis II, which Jeremy Hansen flew in April 2026.^1,22

$5.3 billion and a launch date that kept moving

When Gateway’s first elements were expected to launch

By early 2026 the program’s top risk was meeting that December 2027 date. Program documents showed it would likely slip more than six months, driven by HALO. Just before shipping HALO, the contractor had seen one spot of microscopic corrosion on its primary structure; after delivery the project found more, paused other integration work on the structure and, as of January 2026, had not found the root cause.¹⁰

$5.3B

Gateway’s initial capability baseline: PPE, HALO, launch and integration, set December 2023¹⁰

$935M

HALO contract with Northrop Grumman, finalized July 2021⁶

$375M

PPE contract with Maxar, now Lanteris, including options, May 2019³

$331.8M

Falcon Heavy launch of PPE and HALO together, February 2021⁵

March 2026: paused “in its current form”

The pause came eight months after Congress set aside money for the station: the budget reconciliation law of July 2025 included $2.6 billion for Gateway.¹³ At the Ignition event on March 24, 2026, NASA announced that after the first landings it would build a base on the surface near the South Pole, and that it intends to pause Gateway in its current form despite challenges with some existing hardware. Orion crews will now transfer directly to their landers, without stopping at a station.^11,12 The administration’s fiscal 2027 budget request, released in April, asked Congress to let NASA repurpose the $2.6 billion toward the lunar base and other priorities.¹⁴

In April 2026 NASA directed Northrop Grumman to stop work on HALO except for a limited set of efforts.¹⁰ The HALO contract, converted to a cost-plus contract in 2024, then stood at $1.9 billion, according to a June 2026 NASA Inspector General memo reported by Spaceflight Now; the memo said Thales Alenia Space had found widespread corrosion throughout the module.¹⁸

The propulsion module goes to Mars, HALO’s systems to the surface

The partners are adjusting their own hardware. In June 2026 ESA said it would continue I-Hab through its critical design review and then assess whether it can be repurposed, slow work on Lunar View while keeping the key technologies it needs for deep space exploration, and study whether Lunar Link could serve as a dedicated communications asset, possibly within ESA’s Moonlight program.¹⁹ Canada said in August 2026 that it would redirect Canadarm3 toward logistics on the lunar surface, keeping MDA Space’s roughly C$1 billion contract unchanged.²⁰ The UAE’s space center said it remains committed to Artemis without detailing the airlock’s future.²¹ Japan, which was to supply I-Hab’s life support, already has a role on the surface: NASA’s base plan counts on a JAXA pressurized rover in its second phase.¹¹

Gateway’s first module crossed the Atlantic in 2025 and stopped in Arizona. The thrusters built to hold it in lunar orbit are now scheduled to fly past Mars in 2029.¹⁶