By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) - NASA announced on Tuesday it has canceled plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use components from the project to build a $20 billion base on the moon's surface,

NASA's Gateway lunar space station won't launch in new changes to the Artemis program, which include ramping up development of a $20 billion moon base.

For decades, nuclear propulsion has been a fixture of aerospace engineering proposals and government studies, always promising, never quite leaving the laboratory. That changes in 2028.

NASA has big, potentially revolutionary plans coming up. On March 24, the agency announced that it wants to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars by the end of 2028. If successful, it would be the first probe to use nuclear propulsion to travel beyond Earth’s orbit.

NASA plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft and three helicopters to Mars before the end of 2028, a mission that would mark the first time a fission reactor has propelled a craft between planets.

NASA's Gateway lunar space station won't launch next year in new changes to the Artemis program, which include ramping up development of a $20 billion moon base and a nuclear-powered 'Freedom'