The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday, March 25, edition that NASA is abandoning plans for a lunar orbiting space station, leaving Canada's contribution -- a next-generation robotic arm -- without a clear purpose. The Globe's Ivan Semeniuk writes that change was announced Tuesday by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. To speed up lunar base construction, Mr. Isaacman said the Gateway orbiting station is no longer a priority for NASA's Artemis program, which seeks to establish a long-term U.S. presence on the moon. The change presents a dilemma for the Canadian Space Agency, which is slated to provide hardware for Gateway, including a $1-billion-plus artificial intelligence enabled robotic arm currently being built by MDA Space. While there will undoubtedly be a need for robotics of some kind as part of a lunar base, MDA's arm is designed to operate in the weightless vacuum of space, rather than the dusty lunar environment at one-sixth Earth's gravity. MDA's share price dipped by 11 per cent in response to the news that Gateway was cancelled. The price later partly recovered. BMO Capital analyst Thanos Moschopoulos says MDA will likely retain its role in Artemis, even if in modified form.