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Facing its 60th anniversary next month, NASA is reaffirming its vision for the next years of spaceflight.
"We're on the moon, friends," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told space industry members Monday morning at the annual AIAA Space Forum in Orlando.
Bridenstine, appointed by President Donald Trump who took the helm of NASA in April, reaffirmed Trump's 2017 directive to send astronauts back to the moon.
In a keynote speech on NASA's history, Bridenstine described the agency's plans to return to the pace of exploration established in the 1960s, 11 years after the agency's creation.
Now, NASA plans to take advantage of the robust private space industry to create a more sustainable and long-term presence in the space.
"We do it in a way that has never been done before," said Bridenstine. "There is only one country on the planet that will build an architecture for sustainability so we can come and go on the moon."
Bridenstine spoke of the Gateway, a spaceport that will orbit the moon and serve as a starting point for deep space exploration missions. In conjunction with the space launch system, the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA and the Orion spacecraft under construction at the Kennedy Space Center, the bridge would serve as a lunar space station that would also support multiple missions in different areas of the moon. . as for Mars.
Orion is expected to complete a mission-free mission (Exploration Mission-1) orbiting the moon by 2020. Exploration mission-2 should take a crew on a lunar flyby in mid-2022 And the first astronauts could visit the gate by 2024, according to NASA.
Reusability will ultimately play a central role in Bridenstine's views of the next era of the program, highlighting a trend that has become the cornerstone of rocket development in recent years.
According to Bridenstine, by Exploration Mission 4, Orion will have reusable components.
"We need every part of the architecture between the Earth and the Moon to be reusable," he said.
The moon would then serve as a training ground where NASA will refine its technology before the next big jump.
"We're going to remove the risk, and we're going to take all the architecture out of Mars," said Bridenstine.
As the mission of bringing the United States back to world domination by establishing dominance – and especially human domination – in space is at the heart of NASA's current plans, former NASA administrators have warned Bridenstine to focus on other areas of hypersonic exploration.
"NASA is more than a human spaceflight," said former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin, speaking at a NASA panel at age 60. "People have different expectations for NASA and you have to make sure there is a balance between the programs."
Charles Bolden, another former NASA director, said he would like to focus less on launchers and focus more on orbits and platforms in orbit to reach the surface of the moon and Mars.
It is still unclear whether these surfaces will serve as colonies for humans, but Bridenstine does not exclude this possibility.
"We do not intend to have a permanent presence of humans on the moon," said Bridenstine, before pausing. And to add: "Although I am not opposed to that.
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