Jim Bridenstine leaves Artemis program ‘in good shape’ for Biden’s NASA

At 12 p.m. ET today, Jim Bridenstine formally stepped down from his role as NASA administrator. While at the agency, the former Oklahoma congressman and navy aviator used his political skills to garner bipartisan support for the Trump administration’s Artemis program, the agency’s foundational initiative. to land humans on the moon by 2024 – a deadline widely seen as nearly impossible. meet.

In anticipation of President Joe Biden taking office and the Senate’s transition to Democratic control, Bridenstine, a Republican, spent his final days as an administrator making one last push for the Artemis agenda, an attempt to separation to protect the program from potential cancellation. Last week, he met with top Democrats, including Senator Patrick Leahy, who is expected to become the second-highest-ranking Senate official once Biden takes office.

“We have done everything we can to build the consensus necessary for this program to be sustainable in the long term,” said Bridenstine. The edge in an interview before leaving. “I think as much as we’ve worked to build consensus over the past three years, I think we’re in good shape.

The multibillion-dollar Artemis program will face a new administration focused on building consensus around other priorities, including tackling the coronavirus pandemic and tackling climate change.

Already, Congress has hesitated over a 2024 deadline for humans to land on the moon: of the $ 3.3 billion NASA said needed to keep next year’s budget on track for 2024, Congress has proposed $ 850 million. But Bridenstine still sees it as a victory: During a pandemic, NASA’s budget is billions more than it was when he took office.

The $ 850 million for NASA marks the first time Congress has agreed to fund a human lunar lander since the Apollo program. “It’s remarkable,” said Casey Dreier, senior space policy advisor at the Planetary Society, in an interview. “It didn’t get this far during the constellation program, the last time we tried to go to the Moon.”

But it also shows that NASA “failed to make a case for Congress as to why it needed this money now, and why it needed it for 2024,” Dreier said.

Bridenstine tweeted a final post as an administrator on Wednesday in a touching three-minute video, stressing that ‘eliminating the division’ is key to long-term success for Artemis and welcoming the next administrator who will inherit the program. .

“With that, I say goodbye. And I’ll tell you, when a new team comes in, give them your full support. Because they need it, they deserve it, and of course, what we’re trying to do, we’re not just going through multiple administrations, but decades and generations, ”he said.

Steve Jurczyk, former NASA number two under Bridenstine, assumed the role of interim administrator at noon after Biden was sworn in.

President Biden is expected to choose a woman to serve as the administrator of NASA, which has only been held by men since the agency was founded in 1958. Its transition team for NASA, led by the director of the National Air and Space Museum, Ellen Stofan, spent more than a month reviewing the agency’s top programs and interviewing agency staff, but hasn’t released any clues to the official position of Biden on space policy issues.

Bridenstine said The edge he is considering taking a job in his home state, Oklahoma, but declined to say what that job will be. When asked if he was showing up again, he replied, “Oh, no no no. No, I’ll tell you, I don’t want to run for office.

“They say never say never, but it would take something big to get me back into politics. I have never been so happy not to be in politics.

In the Twitter video, where he choked on thanking NASA employees, Bridenstine ended with a simple message: “Go get them. Go to NASA. Ad Astra. “