NASA
The first steps in a journey are often the hardest. So it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate NASA’s important first step toward establishing a permanent presence in deep space.
Against a backdrop of blue skies and white clouds, the Orion spacecraft plunged into the Pacific Ocean hundreds of kilometers from the Baja Peninsula on Sunday. This concludes the Artemis I mission, a 25.5-day space flight, and signifies that NASA is almost ready to send humans back into deep space again.
This has never happened in half a century. Sometimes it seemed like it might never happen again.But now it’s definitely Happening.
NASA’s return to the moon, and someday to Mars, has been sluggish at times. The political process that has brought NASA to this point in recent decades has been motivated by a messy, bigoted pork project. It is undeniable that dozens of other nations have made their human deep space exploration programs very real.
Long time no see.
fake start
The last Apollo program ended this month in 1972. For a while, the U.S. president and space agency were content to focus human exploration in low-Earth orbit with the development of the U.S. space shuttle and plans to build a large space station.
But eventually some started to get restless. In his 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, President George Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative. The plan was to complete the space station and at the turn of the century humans would begin building bases on the Moon.
What happened next wasn’t particularly pretty. Several people at NASA, including administrator Dick Truly, were not entirely on board with Bush’s ideas. They were worried that the lunar program would disrupt the space station. Infamously, NASA conducted his 90-day study, which leaked, suggesting that Bush’s plan could cost him more than $5 trillion. Congress didn’t need such a budget, so Moon’s plan died.
They lay dormant for almost 15 and a half years until President George W. Bush revived them. Bush, like his father, envisioned a daring plan to send humans back to the moon, learn how to navigate in deep space, and go to Mars. This became the Constellation Program.
This vision was well received by the aerospace industry, but three bad things happened after that. NASA’s new administrator, Mike Griffin, has chosen a large and particularly expensive architecture to bring humans back to the Moon: the Ares I and Ares V rockets. International partners were largely ignored. And both the president and Congress fought for the full funding necessary for the program to survive.
Constellation was years behind schedule and well over budget when President Obama canceled the plans in 2010. The development of these programs has meandered for much of the last decade, costing over $30 billion and without a clear destination. Things changed in late 2017 when Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA would land humans on the moon.
This led to the creation of the Artemis Program in 2018 and 2019. It was far from perfect, but it was more than functional. Moreover, it built on past failures. Whereas the Constellation program had a purely government-driven architecture, Artemis has increasingly relied on commercial spaces. Artemis also sought to build international cooperation from the beginning through a series of bilateral agreements. Artemis AgreementAnd as of this year, the program is fully funded.
After Orion landed, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Sunday, “Fifty years ago we went as a country, as a government. Today, we work not just with our international partners, but with our commercial partners as well.” It is the beginning of a new beginning.”
unusual alignment
Myriad technical challenges remain for the Artemis program, including the development and testing of SpaceX’s complex Starship lunar lander and Axiom’s research into a spacesuit capable of operating in a lunar environment. These contracts, awarded in 2021 and 2022 respectively, will likely take time and patience to materialize.
None of this will happen immediately.Artemis II is unlikely to fly by 2025and an actual lunar landing mission won’t happen in the next decade, probably until 2027 or 2028.
But the long-term view is beneficial here. His other two post-Apollo deep space programs failed due to a lack of political support, funding, or both. Artemis is different. It has both political support and funding. Amazingly, nearly every aspect of the space policy firmament—the White House, Congress, international allies, traditional aerospace, commercial space, and space advocacy groups—is aligned with Artemis’ broader goals.
This kind of support has not existed in programs like this or Apollo since the 1960s. And that enthusiasm only crystallized in the crucible of the national tragedy that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. has had to survive between four different and highly divisive administrations, from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden.
“I see the country torn apart by partisanship,” said Nelson. “It doesn’t exist here. NASA is nonpartisan. Both R and D support us.”
Surprisingly, politics are organized. Then we move on to the technical execution. Engineering is hard, but unlike space policy, it’s at least grounded in reason. Artemis I has been shown to be a technical success. Do you think SpaceX can’t build a moon-landing rocket, or can her Axiom working on NASA’s design build a spacesuit that keeps moon dust at bay?
Sure, they can and will.
Insufficient adjustment?
NASA is also taking steps to address one of the last major issues with Artemis: lack of coordination. The Johnson Space Center in Houston is responsible for Orion and astronaut training. The Marshall Space Flight Center in northern Alabama builds the SLS rocket and manages the development of the lunar lander. Kennedy Space Center begins mission.
As a result, several organizations and outside advisers have criticized NASA for lacking a “program office” to coordinate the myriad elements of the Artemis mission.
For example, NASA’s Inspector General’s Office recently mentioned“Unlike the first manned mission to the moon under the Apollo program, NASA has an overall NASA program manager to oversee the Artemis program and a major system integrator to act as the Space Shuttle program. There are no contractors.” The concern is that without such officials, the program will lack cohesion and struggle for influence.
But such offices are certainly coming. Artemis I’s mission Mike Sarafin, a senior NASA engineer with his success as his manager, will be the ‘mission development manager’ for Artemis III. In an interview, Sarafin said that the Artemis program his office is still in the development stage and did not want to discuss details just yet. However, that role appears to include the overall planning and coordination of a complex flight to the lunar surface. He brings together the SLS rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and the manned landing system program under one roof.
Sarafin seems like a good choice to lead the development of Artemis III. He led the Artemis I mission to countless delays, overcame liquid hydrogen fuel challenges, and he overcame not one but two hurricanes in the weeks before the mission finally flew. Still, he and his team brought home a spacecraft in excellent condition that met or exceeded all targets by landing on the water on Sunday.
Another criticism of Artemis is that it simply repeats the Apollo program. Such criticism would be natural if Artemis failed after a few missions. Learning to live and work in space, and ultimately having a reliable pathway to send humanity deeper into the solar system. system.
“So we made the impossible possible and made it possible,” Nelson said of Apollo. “Now we’re doing it again, but with a different purpose. This time we’re going back to the moon and learning to live, work and create.”
The greatest success imaginable for Artemis is that it has a permanence that it did not enjoy during the Apollo days. They and their partners should continue to perform as admirably as they did last month.
