A Closer Look At NASA’s Return To The Moon
In a 74-page document released by NASA a few years ago, the agency goes over the entire plan for the next decade to return humans to the surface of the Moon. However, despite only being released around three years ago in 2020, already so much has changed in terms of mission plans and dates. This includes new delays, mission developments, completed hardware, and much more.
Not long ago, the success of Artemis I marked a major first step and has propelled work toward the next mission, Artemis II. This being said, different cost concerns and slow development can have an equally powerful effect but in the opposite direction. Not to mention, this time around, NASA not only wants to land humans on the Moon, but set up a more permanent human presence.
This will require extremely reliable launch options and mission operations not just for the next couple of years, but quite far into the future. Here I will go more in-depth into NASA’s current progress on the Artemis Missions, current complications, the next mission, and more.
Artemis Progress
The primary Artemis Program consists of three separate missions each with a unique goal. The first, which we saw lift off almost a year ago in November, was uncrewed and meant to test the SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft, and general mission operations. The second is Artemis II, set to launch a crew of four and travel to the Moon’s orbit before returning home. Finally, you have Artemis III which would carry a crew to lunar orbit, transfer two crew members to SpaceX’s lunar lander, and land on the surface.
Already NASA is predicting some delays and concerns with the Artemis III timeline. Specifically, some agency officials are not confident in SpaceX’s ability to have a Starship lunar lander ready by that time period. This could create a large gap in time between Artemis II and III. Some officials have even suggested turning Artemis III into another flyby mission similar to Artemis II assuming a lander is not ready. While important, it’s hard to say what will be ready by late 2025 when this mission is scheduled to happen. For the time being, the agency is still preparing to launch on the set schedule according to the mission plan.
An even more pressing launch is Artemis II, scheduled to lift off in just about one year from now in November 2024, exactly two years after Artemis I. With this mission approaching, there is quite a bit of physical progress already underway.
For example, just over a week ago, NASA reported that all of the SLS core stage RS-25 engines had been installed. Here, teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have structurally joined all four RS-25 engines onto the core stage for NASA’s Artemis II Moon rocket. In a statement, they said, “Technicians added the first engine to NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket core stage Sept. 11. Teams installed the second engine onto the stage Sept. 15 with the third and fourth engines Sept. 19 and Sept. 20. Technicians with NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company and the RS-25 engines lead contractor, along with Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, now will focus efforts on the complex task of fully securing the engines to the stage and integrating the propulsion and electrical systems within the structure.”
During the launch, these four engines together will provide more than 2 million pounds of thrust for eight minutes of flight, helping to send the Artemis II crew beyond low-Earth orbit to venture around the Moon. In addition, over the last few months, we have seen Orion’s heat shield installed, and progress on the European Service Module. Provided by ESA (European Space Agency), the service module is the powerhouse that will fuel, propel, and provide in-space maneuvering capability, and is responsible for life support commodities such as water and breathable air for astronauts onboard Orion in support of future Artemis missions.
Not only has physical progress been underway, but also on the training side. As partially mentioned prior, Artemis II will carry the first crew on a journey to the Moon before returning to Earth. Last month, the Artemis II crew and teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program successfully completed the first in a series of integrated ground system tests at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for their mission around the Moon. The crew awoke at their crew quarters inside Kennedy’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkouts building before putting on test versions of the Orion crew survival system spacesuits they will wear on launch day. They then departed in NASA’s new Artemis crew transportation fleet to take them to Launch Pad 39B, traversing the nine-mile journey to the pad. This was the first test of 7 for the crew that will be completed between now and launch day.
Cost & Time Concerns
At the same time as the agency and its partners prepare to launch the Artemis II mission, they are also trying to deal with a few major concerns relating to the future of this program. Earlier this year, the NASA Office of Inspector General released a full 56-page report on both SLS booster and engine contracts. This report not only highlighted that there could be delays in the future, but the amount of money spent was extremely high.
In the audit, they examined the extent to which NASA is meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals for the Boosters and Adaptation contracts, and whether the RS-25 Restart and Production, the follow-on production contracts, reduce the government’s financial risk and promote affordability. In short, they don’t. In the very first sentence, they say “NASA continues to experience significant scope growth, cost increases, and schedule delays on its booster and RS-25 engine contracts, resulting in approximately $6 billion in cost increases and over 6 years in schedule delays above NASA’s original projections.
For context, NASA initially awarded a company $2.1 billion under a program named “Adaptation” between June 2006 to September 2020, and $3.6 billion for the Restart and Production program, from November 2015 to September 2029. This was for the RS-25 engine which were just installed on the Artemis II SLS rocket.
The report goes on to say, “Further, NASA used cost-plus contracts at times where we believe fixed-price contracts should have been considered to potentially reduce costs, including the addition of 18 new production engines under the RS-25 Restart and Production contract. In addition, contractors did not receive accurate performance ratings in accordance with federal requirements, such as the “very good” rating awarded to Aerojet Rocketdyne on the end-item Adaptation contract despite only finishing 5 of 16 engines. As a result, we question $19.8 million in award fees it received for the 11 unfinished engines which were subsequently moved to the RS-25 Restart and Production contract and may now be eligible to receive additional award fees” they said.
To make matters worse, a more recent audit of the agency and the Artemis program, found even greater concerns. The audit was completed by the GAO or the United States Government Accountability Office. This 21-page report highlighted the future plan of SLS in relation to the Artemis missions and why NASA needs to improve its transparency among other things. The report was quoted saying, “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).”
They continued to point out that after SLS’s first launch late last year, NASA plans to spend billions of dollars to continue producing multiple SLS components, including core stages and rocket engines, needed for future Artemis missions. The program is also working to produce hardware for more capable versions of the SLS, such as the Block 1B and Block 2, for use on later missions.
The audit went on to say, “Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is
unaffordable.” While there are quite a few more projects within the Artemis program that don’t just include SLS, this rocket takes up a good portion of the money which is why it’s so important. For example, the SLS program accounts for more than one third of NASA’s budget request for programs required to return to the moon. In the president’s budget submission for fiscal year 2024, NASA requested $6.8 billion for the five programs that will be required for Artemis III. The SLS program accounted for about $2.5 billion, or 37 percent of that request.
The report finished by saying, “As of July 2023, the program has not updated its 5-year production and operations cost estimate to reflect the current expected costs for the SLS program. Without regular updates, cost estimates lose their usefulness as predictors of likely outcomes and as benchmarks for meaningfully tracking progress. As a result, it is unclear what the current estimates are to produce SLS hardware covered by the fiscal year 2024 budget request” they said. A problem that needs to be solved soon if NASA truly wants to return humans to the Moon, and for good. These cost concerns will have significant negative effects on future missions if not properly addressed. While we might not see an effect on the next mission or two, down the line NASA needs a solution.
Conclusion
At the same time as NASA makes progress toward launching humans to the Moon, they are also dealing with delays and significant cost concerns. The Space Launch System rocket is core to the future of Artemis, and if the agency can’t afford it, this could create a lot of future problems. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.