Artemis and the New Administration

As the NASA community ponders how the agency, especially the Artemis program, may fare in the second Trump Administration, one industry veteran is suggesting a new policy approach: have NASA focus on validating whether there really is the possibility of an economically self-sustaining presence on the Moon. That prospect underpins the excitement about Artemis, but NASA just canceled the one project that would have started answering that question - VIPER.

Panelists at last week's Beyond Earth Symposium shared their expectations for what will happen to NASA when Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, including Artemis and its goal of returning astronauts to the Moon. The Artemis program began on Trump's watch during his first term, but much has changed since then, especially the emergence of Elon Musk as a close advisor.

Musk is building one of the Human Landing Systems to transport astronauts down to and back from the lunar surface, but his passion is Mars and Trump is a Mars fan, too. More broadly, Musk is co-leading an effort to dramatically reduce the size of government and the national debt. Any cost-cutting almost surely will encompass NASA. In particular, Musk's disdain for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for getting astronauts to lunar orbit is well known, in part because of its lack of reusability.

Scott Pace, Kevin O'Connell and Greg Autry, all Republicans, and Lori Garver, a Democrat, seemed to agree that SLS and its Orion crew capsule are in jeopardy at least as currently planned.

Pace was executive secretary of the National Space Council and O'Connell Director of NOAA's Office of Space Commerce in Trump's first term. Autry, a professor at the University of Central Florida, is often mentioned as someone who might play a role in the second term. Garver was NASA Deputy Administrator in President Obama's first term when Congress directed NASA to build SLS and Orion, but is a staunch SLS critic.

Garver thought other Artemis elements, like the Gateway lunar space station, also would not fare well. Gateway is sometimes criticized as being unnecessary, but one advantage is that it opens opportunities for international partners. Europe, Canada, Japan and the UAE are all building modules or other components, but she is skeptical international space cooperation will be an important element of the Trump Administration because "it is, by its nature, slow, which is the opposite of what these folks have in mind."

Pace disagreed, arguing that space has become globalized and is a critical domain for the United States militarily, economically and diplomatically.

Now Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, he insisted that "what we have to do is persuade other countries that they want to align with us" not just because of idealistic ideas fostered by Star Trek aficionados, but because "we're trying to set norms of behavior and rules to create a predictable economic environment for investment, provide a more stable international security environment" and other larger purposes.

"I think international engagement is going to be an important part of the Trump Administration because it's part of larger national interests and it reflects the geopolitical reality that we currently have." - Scott Pace

A later panel focused on a different aspect of the question. Assuming Artemis continues, is NASA actually creating a path to sustainable exploration and utilization of the Moon?

NASA trumpets that theme as the difference between Artemis and Apollo. They're not just redoing Apollo - a series of U.S.-centric "flags and footprints" missions to demonstrate American technological superiority over the Soviet Union. This time they are going with international and commercial partners for a sustained lunar presence.

During a discussion about cislunar architecture, Brent Sherwood, a consultant who spent many years at Boeing, JPL, and most recently Blue Origin, made the point that Artemis is generating enthusiasm because of expectations that substantial quantities of water exist at the South Pole that can support human operations there over the long term. But no one knows how much water is there and NASA just canceled the first project designed to begin getting the answer - the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover or VIPER.

VIPER "was our only opportunity to start learning whether the foundation of all of our excitement about the south polar region of the Moon has merit or not," and that should be NASA's focus.

"I think the stated policy goal of going to the Moon needs to be to validate whether there really is an economically self sustaining presence on the Moon." - Brent Sherwood

To him that means once lunar operations begin "you don't have to keep feeding it the way you fed it when you started" because there are customers for whatever products and services are offered. But those customers have yet to emerge. He chafed at the characterization of activities as "commercial" when they really are "privatized."

"Commercial to me means the dollar bill that pays for it came out of a private wallet, not a public budget. All you have to do is follow the money" and if it originated in the federal government, it's not commercial. "Sustainable will be when genuinely commercial business kicks in." He also cautioned that utilizing whatever water is there and, more broadly, establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon won't be easy.

"None of these things will be nearly as fast or as pain free to develop as people would like to think in policy circles. This is hard stuff and it will take years to work through the bugs, so let's not underestimate the time involved and the challenge involved to make even very simple things happen on planetary surfaces." -Brent Sherwood

For now, the U.S. government is the dominant customer and the results of the November 5 election have reopened the question of whether it will remain committed to sustained lunar exploration and utilization or pivot to Mars.

Artemis is designed to be a steppingstone to Mars, but NASA doesn't envision people on the Red Planet until the 2040s. Musk talks about getting them there in this decade with launches of as many as five uncrewed Starships in 2026 and, if those go well, crewed flights in 2028. While crewed flights that soon seem extremely unlikely, spending money to address the technical and health challenges while at the same time funding Artemis would be formidable. SpaceX has more than $4 billion in contracts from NASA to build a Human Landing System version of Starship to put astronauts on the Moon. The question is whether that money might be diverted into Mars exploration instead.

Focusing on "why" the Moon, as Sherwood points out, may be more critical than ever in the coming months.

One thing participants in the first panel agreed on is that NASA is in for change. Garver asserted that while she is known as leading "the most disruptive transition team ever" between the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, "I'm not going to hold that record any more." Autry added that Musk's "interest in small government exceeds [his] interest in space architecture and you better look at that because the challenges I think NASA faces are much more organizational and cultural than they are technical."

Pace thinks Musk's biggest impact will be on personnel because "people are policy" and "they are going to be very focused on getting stuff done." He anticipates the words used by then-Vice President Mike Pence at the beginning of the Artemis program will take on more impetus - to get it done "by any means necessary."

Last Updated: Nov 23, 2024 12:28 pm ET

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