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The announcement comes about six weeks after Vice President Mike Pence called for an accelerated program to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo's last lunar landing in 1972. But since the White House issued this bold mandate, NASA has details on how it would achieve it or on the cost of the program.
In a tweet Monday evening, President Donald Trump wrote: "Under my administration, we are giving back to @NASA its splendor and we are returning to the Moon, then to Mars.I update the budget to include 1, An additional $ 6 billion so we can return to Space in a big way! "
The money would come from a surplus of Pell Grant 's money, a federal program used to help students pay for university studies, according to the Associated Press. The reaction of the Congress was not clear. Democrats in the House have been particularly critical of the White House plan, calling it a political staging, aligned with the election calendar.
"The lack of clear planning so far is not a way to manage the human space exploration agenda of our country," said at a recent meeting. Hearing the representative Kendra Horn, D-Okla., Chair of a subcommittee that oversees NASA. "The missile of 2024 left NASA in trouble – scrambling to develop a plan and rushing to bring together a budget amendment that has not yet been delivered to Congress, and preparatory work with partners international standards on future exploration targets. "
The announcement of Pence surprised many people within NASA. The agency aimed to bring humans to the lunar surface by 2028. And in March, the White House submitted a budget request representing just over $ 21 billion for NASA , a reduction of almost $ 500 million in revenues this year.
Since the White House asked NASA to speed up the schedule, the space agency is struggling to see how it could carry out such a complicated mission in a short time. At present, NASA does not have the ability to fly astronauts in space. Instead, Russia will pay more than $ 80 million per seat to Russia to send its astronauts to the International Space Station.
As part of the amended budget request, the White House had budgeted $ 1 billion to start developing a landing gear that could transport astronauts to the moon's surface. An additional $ 651 million would also accelerate the development of NASA's Space Launch System, built largely by Boeing, and Lockheed Martin's Orion spacecraft.
It would also strengthen the technologies to help the agency explore the lunar poles with robots in anticipation of a human mission, using solar energy as a source of propulsion and converting water into ice found under the lunar crust.
The use of Pell Grant's money to fund the mission on the moon, dubbed Artemis, "would reduce spending for Pell Grant's programs, as the budget continues to ensure that all students will get all of their money." grant and maintain the program on a sound fiscal basis ". Wesley Denton, spokesperson for the direction and budget, said in a statement, according to the AP.
Following the Trump announcement on Monday, NASA's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, tweeted: "This is the boost that @NASA needs to move forward by putting the next man and the first woman on the moon. "
But NASA officials have warned that the agency would need additional funds in the future to achieve its goal.
"This additional investment is a down payment for NASA's efforts to land humans on the moon by 2024," Bridenstine said in a call for journalists Monday night. "In the coming years, we will need additional funds – it's a good sum that gets us out of the door very hard and prepares us for the future."
Instead of going directly to the surface of the moon, as NASA did during the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it seeks rather to have a more permanent presence in building an outpost in orbit called Gateway.
Although this is a more ambitious venture, Bridenstine said the agency wanted to return to the moon – but this time to stay. Nevertheless, to achieve this ambitious five-year goal, NASA announced that it would reduce the reach of the bridge, at least initially. In order to allow humans to surface quickly, the budget amendment proposes to reduce this project by $ 321 million and to move "the bridge's potential capabilities into the future".
The reaction of the Congress is not clear. Many lawmakers will probably oppose the idea that a very popular student aid program is being used. Bridenstine said that he had contacted the top congressional leaders, but that it was "not easy to reach everyone" in a timely manner.
"We will see various reactions" of the Congress, he said. "But I'll tell you when we talk about what NASA is trying to achieve, there is a lot of excitement."
NASA plans to launch its gigantic SLS rocket for the first time next year without astronauts. This would be followed by another mission, with astronauts in the Orion crew capsule, for a trip around the moon. The third mission, to come in 2024, would send a pair of astronauts, a woman and a man, to the Gateway, then to the lunar surface.
Shortly after the announcement of Pence, in which he claimed that astronauts would surrender to the lunar surface "by all means", it was said that the White House would require a considerable additional amount, up to 8 billions of dollars a year.
But at a recent congressional hearing, Bridenstine disputed that.
The White House's revised budget request came a week after Jeff Bezos unveiled a lunar landing gear that his space company, Blue Origin, had sent to NASA to salvage cargo and possibly people on the lunar surface. Many other companies, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Sierra Nevada Corporation, are also competing for the construction of various parts of the bridge. (Bezos owns the Washington Post.)
This article was written by Christian Davenport, Washington Post reporter.
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