Story at a glance
- NASA said last week that it’s Artemis program to send humans to the moon would be delayed at least until 2025.
- A new report by the Office of Inspector General found multiple issues that could delay Artemis well beyond 2025.
- A legal battle between Blue Origin and NASA forced the space agency to stop work on Artemis.
NASA’s ambitious plan to send humans to the surface of the moon could be delayed well beyond 2025, according to a new report.
NASA initially announced last week that sending a crewed spacecraft to the moon by 2024 wasn’t going to happen under it’s Artemis program, an initiative that began under the Trump administration that seeks to send the first woman and first person of color to the moon.
But after NASA awarded a monumental contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build and develop a lunar lander capable of sending astronauts to the surface of the moon, it became engulfed in a drawn-out legal battle with rival commercial space company Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos.
Blue Origin sued NASA over its decision to go with SpaceX for its lunar lander which forced the agency to stop working on its Artemis program while the legal battle worked itself out, which NASA administrator Bill Nelson attributed to the program’s delay.
“Returning to the Moon as quickly and safely as possible is an agency priority. However, with the recent lawsuit and other factors, the first human landing under Artemis is likely no earlier than 2025,” Nelson said in a statement.
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A federal judge ruled in favor of NASA, allowing the company to resume work with SpaceX and move forward with Artemis work.
However, a new report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has found that the human landing component of the Artemis program will likely be delayed at least until mid-2024. The report details multiple issues that could prevent NASA from achieving its Artemis goals.
OIG said the agency needs time to test its human landing system and the spacesuits that astronauts will wear during the mission, which OIG believes will exceed its current timeline for getting humans to space by several years.
The report also found that, “NASA lacks a comprehensive and accurate cost estimate that accounts for all Artemis program costs.”
OIG projected that NASA will spend $93 billion on the entire Artemis program, but the agency may not be able to sustain the program at that cost. It estimated that each flight component of Artemis will cost approximately $4.1 billion, which is twice as much as the estimate given by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In a letter from 2019, OMB estimated that NASA would need over $2.3 billion in order to fly each component of Artemis.
The OIG report also highlights how NASA has contracted out components of its Artemis mission. NASA contracted with Boeing and Lockheed Martin under a cost-plus contract, which gives NASA oversight in the development process and allows it to give both companies more money if things go over budget. But with SpaceX, NASA employed a fixed-price contract, giving the space agency less oversight and only a one-time payment to SpaceX for development, while the SpaceX can invest its own money to finish the final project.
OIG recommended that NASA develop a more realistic schedule for all components of its Artemis program while also updating the cost of the program on an annual basis.
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