A week after the 90-day grace period that Trump gave to Jared Isaacman expired, the response from the new NASA administrator has arrived. This Tuesday, the space agency presented its roadmap to fulfill the wishes of the president of the United States to establish a permanent base on the Moon and place nuclear reactors there within five years. In addition, nuclear energy will power a new mission, scheduled for 2028, that will send a robotic probe to Mars.
The starting signal for this new space race, between the Americans and Chinese, will be attempted by the Americans on April 1. “There is only one week left and I can confirm that everything is in order and there is no impediment to the launch of Artemis, if weather conditions permit,” announced scientist Lori Glaze, vice administrator and head of space exploration systems at NASA, applauding after communicating that good news. It can already be said that the United States will try to launch four astronauts to the Moon from April 1 to 6, and there are four attempts to achieve it.
Minutes earlier, Isaacman had announced that NASA is entering a new era that will lead it to establish a permanent base on the lunar surface, during his opening speech at the conference. Ignitionwhich is being held this Tuesday at the space agency’s headquarters in Washington (USA). Without yet providing details or deadlines, the NASA administrator explained that after the Artemis 4 and 5 missions—with which astronauts are scheduled to set foot on the Moon again in 2028—this lunar exploration program will accelerate.
Thus, the forecasts are that, starting in 2029, there will be manned landings on the Moon every six months and that, previously, from 2027, the number of robotic missions to the lunar surface will increase exponentially. “But this time, our goal is not to step on the Moon, but to stay there,” Isaacman added. If he achieves these ambitious goals of flying frequently to the Earth’s natural satellite, his project of establishing the first human colony on another world would begin.
For now, NASA has only announced that the process would be carried out in three phases. In the first, experimental, it would try to increase both robotic and human activities on the lunar surface; Then, with what was learned in that initial phase, the next objective will be to start developing a semi-livable infrastructure and maintain regular supplies and logistics. Finally, when space freighters—which do not yet exist—capable of transporting many tons of material to the Moon are ready, the agency plans to address the installation of the heavy infrastructure necessary to sustain a continued human presence on the Moon.
Isaacman warned that “the lunar base will not appear overnight. For the first two phases, in the next seven years we will invest approximately 20 billion dollars, which will be allocated to dozens of missions.” This strong investment in the Moon buries Elon Musk’s dreams of beginning the colonization of Mars in the coming years. and he had gotten the president to promise to send astronauts to the red planet during the inaugural speech of his second term.
Accelerate the Artemis program
Returning to the imminent, the first manned mission to the lunar environment in more than half a century, several problems in the SLS rocket – which will launch the first manned lunar mission in more than half a century – led NASA’s top leader to advance already in February. On the one hand, Isaacman then announced that he wants to make the SLS a much more reliable space shuttle, increasing the launch cadence to at least one every 10 months, after more than three years have passed between the Artemis 1 and 2 missions.
Secondly, the space agency has opened up to using a ship from Jeff Bezos’ space company to land on the Moon in 2028. And furthermore, that will no longer happen in the Artemis 3 mission. This is reserved for carrying out preliminary tests of the lunar capsule, without leaving Earth’s orbit. Faced with these first steps already announced, which are committed to safety and going more slowly than expected, NASA presented this Tuesday much more ambitious medium-term objectives for its presence on the Moon.
Faced with the lack of concreteness with these future plans, Isaacman has announced that he has the participation of his international partners and the space industry. And the head of NASA has warned that “it is a possibility that China wins and reaches the Moon sooner.” “Looking at what we have seen in recent years, if we do not address the changes exposed, we could lose that race,” he acknowledged.
Nuclear energy to reach Mars
One of the great novelties of NASA’s change in strategy is the commitment to the use of nuclear energy to propel interplanetary probes. This technology, until now only tested in the laboratory, aims to considerably accelerate trips to Mars, which with the fuels currently used take an average of nine months. And that, taking advantage of a launch window that opens every 26 months. Outside of it, spaceships would take years to reach the red planet.
The Space Reactor-1 Freedom mission, scheduled to launch in the Martian window of 2028, will demonstrate for the first time in deep space the use of advanced electric propulsion, obtained through nuclear reactions. Without yet specifying how much nuclear energy will shorten the trip to Mars, NASA has explained that when this probe arrives there it will deploy a series of helicopters like the
Regarding collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA announced this Tuesday that it will keep the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit as long as there are no private stations deployed to take over. In addition, plans for a base on the lunar surface lead the agency to shelve the project for a space station around the Moon—the Lunar Gatewaydesigned in collaboration with ESA—. However, during the press conference that concluded the day Ignition of NASA, Isaacman refused to confirm that this represents the definitive cancellation of the lunar orbital station: “We are simply talking about putting it on pause and, for the moment, redirecting the resources planned for it to the base on the surface. All our international partners are going to prefer that their astronauts set foot on the Moon, instead of hanging around it in a station,” concluded the administrator of the US space agency.
