NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Tuesday that the agency has sufficient funds to proceed with construction of its planned moon base, a program estimated to require $20 billion over seven years and $30 billion over the coming decade.
"We have the resources to do this," Isaacman told Bloomberg TV. "We have a lot of resources at NASA. We just need to move them in the needle-moving direction."
Isaacman noted that part of the funding picture stems from assets tied to the now-defunct Gateway program, a lunar-orbit space station NASA had been developing. Earlier on Tuesday, he announced that elements built for Gateway will be repurposed for use on the moon's surface.
"We’ve got a lot of resources there from Gateway," Isaacman said. "We are repurposing that to the surface, where we all want to be. So NASA does not have a top-line problem. I can’t emphasize that enough."
In addition to internal reallocation of previously planned hardware, Isaacman said NASA has consulted with key federal stakeholders about the moon base initiative. "We’ve met with leaders, from authorizers in Congress, the appropriators, the White House," he said. "Everybody gets fully aligned around how we’re going to achieve this."
The broader federal budget context cited by Isaacman includes congressional action that approved nearly $25 billion for NASA for fiscal 2026. That total surpasses the Trump administration's earlier budget request, which had proposed $18.8 billion for the agency and sought to cut NASA's science funding by half. Congress largely restored the science funding in its recent NASA budget bill.
Isaacman also pointed to a legislative tax measure enacted in July that provides an additional $10 billion for space activities through 2032. Taken together, these allocations and the repurposing of Gateway components form the financial basis Isaacman cited in affirming NASA's ability to fund the lunar surface program.
Isaacman framed the effort as one that relies on shifting existing resources toward priorities that will advance the surface program, while maintaining coordination with congressional authorizers, appropriators and the White House. He reiterated NASA's position that the agency faces no overall top-line funding shortfall for the initiative.
Summary
NASA says it has the funding needed to build a new moon base - $20 billion over seven years and $30 billion over a decade - drawing on repurposed Gateway components, recent congressional appropriations and a tax bill that extends space funding through 2032. Administrator Jared Isaacman emphasized internal resource reallocation and engagement with lawmakers and the White House.