NASA is cancelling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and ​will instead use its components to construct a $20 billion ‌base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years, its new chief Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday.

Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency ​in December, made the announcement at the opening of a ​day-long event at NASA’s Washington headquarters at which he ⁠outlined a raft of changes he is making to the agency’s ​flagship moon programme Artemis.

“It should not really surprise anyone that we ​are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told delegates at the event.

The ​Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman and ​Vantor, formerly Maxar, was meant to be a space station parked in a ‌lunar ⁠orbit.

Repurposing the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple.

“Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and ​other programme objectives,” ​Isaacman said.

Lunar ⁠Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would ​use to board the moon landers before descending ​to the ⁠lunar surface.

The changes imposed by Isaacman on the flagship US moon programme in recent weeks are reshaping billions of dollars’ worth of contracts ⁠under ​the Artemis effort.

That is sending companies ​scrambling to accommodate the extra urgency as China makes progress toward its own 2030 moon ​landing.