A US Senate committee heard from the head of NASA what the nature of a development mission means: sometimes you have to wait.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, while aware of what he calls a “space race” with China to establish a sustainable presence on the moon, said Thursday (May 23) that he will only commit to the current launch date of Artemis 2, namely September 2025, if the safety of the astronauts is guaranteed. is not compromised.
“The fact is, if you go to the moon to go to Mars, it’s hard,” Nelson said in livestream commentary. He also paraphrased comments made by then-US President John F. Kennedy in a famous 1962 speech on the Apollo program: “He said we would go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is difficult.”
The Artemis 2 mission around the moon, along with the Artemis 3 lunar landing, was postponed in January this year in part due to the long-known unexpected erosion of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere during the Artemis 1 unmanned test mission from December 2021. Artemis 2’s schedule shifted by nine months, while Artemis 3 was postponed at least a year to 2026.
Related: NASA Inspector General finds problems with Orion’s heat shield ‘pose significant risks’ to the safety of the Artemis 2 crew
Nelson spoke before a Senate appropriations committee that oversees NASA as part of 2025 budget negotiations that will last for months. But Nelson’s testimony came weeks after NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report saying the ablation problems posed “significant risks” to the safety of Artemis 2.
To be fair, the heat shield is not the only reason behind the delays in the Artemis program; commercial spacesuits and the SpaceX Starship lander needed for Artemis 3 also face development challenges. For example, the spaceship has yet to complete a full unmanned orbital test mission, including a safe return, although SpaceX may try again next month. (NASA has repeatedly said it wants to achieve multiple successful Starship flights and specific objectives before astronauts are cleared to fly aboard.)
Earlier this month, three Artemis 2 crew members spoke to Space.com about the OIG report, emphasizing that the problem has been known for a long time, solutions are still being found and no one is in a rush to disembark. ground.
Commander and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, a former U.S. Navy test pilot accustomed to complex aerospace development programs, told Space.com earlier this month that the goal is safe flight, not submitting to an artificial schedule. (Crew members Victor Glover of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, both also military pilots, said much the same; the remaining crew member and NASA astronaut Christina Koch was unavailable for interviews due to training).
“When you build a new vehicle, it doesn’t matter how many requirements you have and how many qualification programs you have,” Wiseman added. “When human hands try to put together an incredibly complex and powerful machine, it will manifest itself in a number of problems. And there will be things you learn as you go all the way up to launch.”
Related: ‘That’s part of space exploration’: Artemis 2 astronauts unfazed by moon mission delays (exclusive)
Nelson’s comments to the committee on the Artemis 2 timeline also emphasized caution, saying NASA “will not launch until it is ready.” While he said September 2025 is a pretty good date, something unexpected could arise or be affected by funding — which he said is half a billion dollars less expected in NASA’s exploration division.
But in the meantime, “Artemis 2 is hitting all the milestones. We’re doing additional research into some of the unusual things happening on the heat shield.” And when asked about an independent investigation, Nelson said the OIG and the Government Accountability Office have both already done so: “There are other things coming in all the time,” he said of this external feedback.
Geopolitical tensions, Nelson acknowledged, are one reason NASA is trying to get to the moon safely but quickly: China is planning an astronaut landing on the moon’s likely watery south pole by 2030, according to Reuters. .
NASA, meanwhile, is targeting unmanned landings there as early as this year under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which tasks companies with sending NASA science payloads to the moon.
“We have a probe later this year on a commercial lander that’s going to dig and check at the south pole for water,” Nelson said, referring to the Astrobotic Technology Griffin Mission 1 with NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, mission. .
“If so [water]Then there’s rocket fuel, hydrogen and oxygen – and that becomes a very valuable resource. That is why China is also going to the South Pole.”
China is a recurring theme at congressional meetings involving NASA; the agency cannot engage in bilateral agreements or coordination with the country under a 2011 directive known as the Wolf Amendment unless Congress authorizes.
Earlier this year, for example, several members of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics said that China’s Tiangong space station would have an advantage for lucrative low-Earth orbit research if a gap were to emerge between its expected end of the International Space Station in 2030 and the rise of private space stations in the coming decade.