What does it take to go from a splashdown to a moon landing in nine months? NASA’s administrator says the answer is in the agency’s own files. Jared Isaacman told reporters at Kennedy Space Center on Friday that NASA is “adopting Apollo’s urgent and intense approach from 1968 through 1972”, a period that saw 24 astronauts fly to the moon and 12 land on it. It is, he said, “not tech industry pixie dust or some new management philosophy”. It is “the same playbook that went from Apollo 7 splashdown to Apollo 11 in just nine months.”
How the schedule is meant to shrink
NASA is cutting what Isaacman called endless meetings and bureaucratic inertia, and adding to its workforce while SpaceX, Blue Origin and other companies work around the clock to hit deadlines. The goal is a moon base and a return of astronauts to the surface in as little as two years. Isaacman said the “new space race”, now against China rather than the Soviet Union, is “much closer than it ever needed to be” because of slow progress in past years.
One shortcut is the spacesuit. The first moonwalkers will wear a lighter, less complex suit than the one Axiom Space is still developing for longer, later excursions. Axiom will test these “sortie suits” on the International Space Station next year. The aim is to cut risk and speed things up.
A docking rehearsal first
Artemis III, planned for next summer, will stay in Earth orbit. The two-week flight carries three NASA astronauts and one Italian. It needs three launches in quick succession from Cape Canaveral: the two landers and the Orion capsule. Orion will dock first with Blue Origin’s Blue Ghost, about 270 miles (435 kilometers) up, then with SpaceX’s Starship in a slightly lower orbit. “As a rocket nerd, it’s going to be pretty awesome,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator.
The landing itself, on Artemis IV, remains set for 2028, about six months after the Artemis II crew flew around the moon. NASA will keep its options open between SpaceX and Blue Origin for that lander for as long as it can, officials said.
A base at the south pole
Unlike the more equatorial Apollo sites, the planned base sits near the lunar south pole, and its first launch is due by year’s end. A Pittsburgh company whose first landing attempt failed in 2024 will try again, aiming for the south polar region with a rover and other experiments. More landers, rovers and orbiters will follow, so that a moon car should be waiting when the first Artemis moonwalkers arrive, officials said.
Frank Rubio, an Artemis III crew member, said a long-term presence is far harder than the Apollo-style commuter flights. “It is incredibly ambitious,” he told The Associated Press. “One thing I’ve always believed and learned is don’t bet against America.”
Sources
- NASA adopting Apollo’s urgency to build a moon base and land astronauts within two years
- NASA adopting Apollo's urgency to build a moon base and land astronauts within two years
- NASA adopting Apollo’s urgency to build a moon base and land astronauts within two years
Photo: Meisam (CC BY-SA 4.0)
