NASA Stories at the Ion: Building the Moon Base: Challenges and Opportunities at the Lunar South Pole

Name: NASA Stories at the Ion: Building the Moon Base: Challenges and Opportunities at the Lunar South Pole
Start: 2026-07-30T08:30:00-05:00
End: 2026-07-30T10:00:00-05:00
Location: Ion – Forum Stairs

Category: Aerospace, Founders & Startups, General Community, Keynote, Networking

Free

WHEN

Thursday

July 30, 2026

8:30 am - 10:00 am CDT

WHERE

Ion – Forum Stairs

4201 Main St.
Houston, TX 77002

what

Building the Moon Base: Challenges and Opportunities at the Lunar South Pole

In this presentation, Moon Base Principal Systems Engineer Shatel Bhakta shares the many challenges NASA must overcome to realize an enduring presence in the lunar South Pole region. He’ll also talk about his journey at NASA, the importance of human space exploration, and what NASA needs from the next generation of aerospace engineers.

About the Speaker

Shatel Bhakta serves as the principal systems engineer for NASA’s Moon Base. In that role, he takes a system-of-systems view of Moon Base infrastructure, ensuring that all components work together to support NASA’s goal of an enduring human presence in the lunar South Pole region.

Prior to working on the Moon Base, Bhakta served as NASA’s lunar architecture lead, guiding a multidisciplinary team across NASA centers to develop a roadmap for crewed exploration of the Moon. This included developing associated conceptual reference missions, concept of operations, site planning guidance, trades and analysis, system element conceptualization, and system-of-systems integration.

Bhakta earned his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and his graduate degree in space architecture from the University of Houston. He is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas.

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NASA Stories at the Ion: Building the Moon Base: Challenges and Opportunities at the Lunar South Pole

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