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The Trump administration’s Moon-Mars program has already dodged the fate of many past presidential space programs: cancellation under new leadership. Last month, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced the Biden administration’s support for Artemis, NASA’s flagship lunar agenda.
It was a rare handover between two jurisdictions at odds in virtually every other area. And it allayed some industry fears that Biden would abandon the moon plan altogether. While still in its infancy, the Artemis program sparked a wave of industry momentum, in part thanks to an energizing but extremely unrealistic target date of 2024 for planting boots on the Moon. .
To get an idea of what will follow for Artemis and NASA, The edge spoke with Bhavya Lal, acting NASA chief of staff and currently the agency’s oldest person named Biden.
Artemis survived the transfer of power – what now?
The program is under extensive review. The group of eight scientists and space policy experts tasked with reviewing NASA for Biden’s transition team set a course for Trump’s quick plan, announced by then-Vice President Mike Pence at the start of 2019. Experts have put together a list of things within Artemis that should stay in and the things that should stay outside to inform the NASA team review.
“Something that was absolutely in line with the goals,” says Lal, who has advised past administrations on space policy and was the Biden team’s main space expert during the transition. “We weren’t going to just throw away everything that had happened over the past few years and start over.”
Lal joined NASA in February and now helps run the ongoing Artemis review within the agency, executing the advice she helped write during the transition.
This review covers all of Artemis’ pillars, including the Space Launch System (SLS), the giant rocket that will launch the first astronaut crews to the Moon in the Orion capsule. It also includes revising the program schedule, international partnerships and developing a budget that will appeal to Congress. The review will also refine planned activities on the Moon and identify places where more business activity can be involved, Lal says.
Nothing is set in stone yet. The review is ongoing and Biden, nearly two months after starting his presidency, has yet to choose his NASA administrator. This is no surprise – it took Trump almost eight months to appoint his administrator, Jim Bridenstine, and almost eight more months to get Senate confirmation. It took four months before Barack Obama appointed Charles Bolden, and about ten months before George Bush called on Sean O’Keefe.
Getting to the moon – but not by 2024
NASA aims to continue investing in SLS and Orion while keeping an eye out for private sector rockets for help if needed. “SLS and Orion will provide the initial transport to and from lunar orbit beyond Artemis, and any proven commercial transport can fill in the gaps if there is any,” Lal says.
By the time the Boeing-built SLS first flies (likely next year, almost three years later than expected), the agency will have spent nearly $ 20 billion on the program, the inspector reported. general of NASA last year, with every launch thereafter. amounting to approximately $ 2 billion.
Cheaper commercial rockets built by companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance exist, but are currently only ready to launch parts not equipped with the Artemis program into space. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the first two elements of NASA’s Lunar Gateway, a planned space station orbiting the moon.
Whenever possible, NASA should “maintain multiple suppliers of launchers, landers and spacecraft throughout the company so that the United States is not too dependent on one system or one supplier.” , Lal said. This is the spirit on display in NASA’s Human Lunar Landing System program, the centerpiece of Artemis that aims to choose two different landers capable of transporting astronauts to the lunar surface.
But Congress, while fully supportive of the Artemis program, has hesitated at the Trump administration’s request for $ 3.3 billion to fund the rapid development of these landers. Instead, he gave NASA $ 850 million for lander development, hammering the last nail in the coffin for Trump’s 2024 target, which many in the space industry saw as unachievable.
Biden’s NASA will set a more manageable schedule, Lal says. “One of the conclusions of the transition team was that 2024, given Congressional appropriations for at least the last two years, 2024 was not realistic.” Setting a new date is tied to establishing an acceptable budget for Congress, “which is a question mark” at this point, Lal says.
International partnerships, with Artemis and beyond
“Honoring commitments made to international partners” was a key tenet of the transition team’s findings, Lal says, whether on the International Space Station or in the Artemis agreements, a set of multilateral agreements with US allies. which aims to establish legal standards of behavior in space. These partners include Russia, an American adversary but a longtime NASA partner on the ISS, where the common goal of maintaining a healthy orbital laboratory replaces disorderly tensions on Earth.
But the NASA-Russia relationship is changing. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has been reluctant to extend its alliance with NASA to the Moon, and last year the United States sought to exclude Russia from early talks on the Artemis accords. This week, Russia followed through on its claims to abandon Artemis by announcing a new deal with China to build a rival moon base and space station in lunar orbit, cementing a new front in an increasingly polarized race in deep space.
NASA is courting its own allies over Artemis, but it is banned from collaborating with China, thanks to a 2011 law called the Wolf Amendment, named after now retired Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA). But as Beijing improves its game on the Moon, some of Biden’s space advisers have opposed China’s policy of exclusion. “Trying to rule them out, I think, is a failed strategy,” said former astronaut Pam Melroy. Politico last year, before joining Biden’s NASA transition team.
Lal avoids Biden’s prospects for NASA-China cooperation under NASA: “I don’t expect collaborations with China, at least on the Artemis program, in any way.”
She says NASA-Russia relations, on the other hand, are expected to continue for the foreseeable future. “There is no reason why we should not collaborate with them in distant space activities.” Although Russia has withdrawn from NASA’s Lunar Gateway program, NASA said in a statement to The edge Wednesday that “they offered to continue exploring interoperability and we welcome such a discussion.”
International relations could extend to climate science operations at NASA, a quieter side of the space agency that is expected to expand under Biden. Last month, Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk had a phone call with Russian Space Chief Dmitry Rogozin, where Jurczyk discussed “NASA’s focus on studies on the climate change using space technology, ”according to a statement from Roscosmos. Rogozin “supported the idea of cooperating in this area,” the statement said.
Lal says it’s too early to discuss specific plans underway to strengthen NASA’s role in Biden’s broad climate program. But she says it’s not just about expanding current programs or increasing the workload of NASA’s existing fleet of weather satellites – it’s also about launching new programs on the front lines. national and international.
“The climate is one area in which we are united at the hip,” she said. Like the space station, where astronaut safety takes precedence over geopolitics, “it may even be necessary to work with some of our adversaries” on an agreement to share critical climate data.
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