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]]>With Artemis II delayed and the next departure date tentatively set for April Fool’s Day, the program desperately needed a success story.
Was Isaacman the person to pull Artemis out of the fire?
Could America’s human space program, except for the ISS, be salvaged from the Congressional pork-barreling and constant political interference from past presidents?
Could NASA continue to exist in the face of a burgeoning commercial space economy led by companies like SpaceX? NASA today has become reliant on SpaceX to ferry its crews to the ISS. Joining SpaceX are other commercial operators, like Blue Origin, Sierra Space and Rocket Lab. All are chomping at the bit to get into the space game. The triumph of the NASA Apollo Program is a distant memory.
Enter Isaacman, a billionaire astronaut who commanded and privately funded two missions to space, the first in 2021, and the second in 2024, using the services and technology from SpaceX. He is a human in space enthusiast and appears well-suited to get NASA’s Artemis Program back on the rails.
Following Isaacman’s reshuffling of upcoming missions beyond Artemis II, Isaacman announced on March 24, 2026, a $20 billion change in plans. No surprise: Lunar Gateway cancelled.
There will be fallout from Gateway’s death. Artemis partners and contractors have been working on components for the project. Some of these are close to completion or already delivered. A partial list follows:
The above suppliers list is far from complete. There are many more subcontractors contributing components to these projects, creating a substantial supply chain.
Gateway was a $5.3 billion project. Is the money gone, or can work be repurposed? In the March 24, 2026 announcement, it states that the Gateway supply chain partners will see their contracts adjusted to repurpose the hardware and software to meet a new objective, the building and support of a permanent lunar base near the South Pole.
Isaacman’s announcement of this new Artemis twist, the Ignition Project. It allocates $20 billion over seven years to construct the lunar base and involves dozens of missions to the Moon.
The Ignition announcement didn’t just discuss the lunar project. I will save the rest for another posting. But for now, what follows describes NASA’s new plan for Artemis.
Ignition is the name Isaacman has chosen to establish the first permanent lunar base by 2030. Ignition includes habitats, lunar transportation, a nuclear power station, communications and other infrastructure. Ignition is to be a testbed for a future mission to Mars and involves three phases:
A recent Politico article labelled the Lunar Gateway a “moondoggle.” I questioned the need from the early stages of the Artemis Program. That, however, doesn’t mean that Gateway has no merit. It could be a model for future waystations between Earth, Mars and other destinations in the Solar System. Future versions of Gateway could become space service centres to support a growing transportation network similar to how gas stations support terrestrial road networks.
Another potential use for a future version of Gateway in cislunar space could serve as an Earth observation platform, providing a bird’s-eye view of the Earth and the satellites that orbit around it.
Gateway could serve to identify any space rocks that might, in future, threaten Earth. And finally, it could provide a template for building future space cities in cislunar space and beyond.
But for now, may Lunar Gateway rest in peace.
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]]>SpaceX has learned from NASA’s early days of testing reusability and engineered it into its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Reusability today is limited to launch stages. The SpaceX Starship plans to be totally reusable with a heavy launch first stage, and the Starship sitting atop. Problems remain as SpaceX overcomes design challenges. A version of it was to be used as the Human Landing System (HLS) in Artemis III. HLS development has largely been confined to drafting boards, making a 2027 or 2028 date for completion questionable.
It took two tries for Jared Isaacman to be named NASA administrator. Since getting Senate approval, he has been visiting NASA facilities and reviewing Artemis and its timelines. Isaacman has expressed concerns about the program’s viability. On February 27, 2026, he told reporters,
“Launching a rocket as important and as complex as SLS every three years is not a path to success…It should be incredibly obvious you don’t go from one uncrewed launch of Orion and SLS, wait three years, go around the Moon, wait three years and land on it.”
Isaacman continued, “There has to be a better way, in line with our history. We did not just jump right to Apollo 11. We did it through Mercury, Gemini, and lots of Apollo missions with a launch cadence of every three months…We should be getting back to basics and doing what we know works.”
The delayed Artemis II mission was to loop around the Moon to test the Orion capsule’s life support systems and the changes being made to SLS as the rocket received the latest upgrades. I say was because of repeated delays for this mission and the entire program.
Re-entry for Artemis II after ten days was to provide proof that the technology was reliable and that a modified trajectory and heat shield remedy would not produce a repeat of the near-catastrophic erosion observed in Orion’s Artemis I return.
Now the rocket, scheduled to fly the first week of February 2026, is back in its assembly building while NASA resolves several ongoing problems. If it flies, it will likely be in late March or April.
Isaacman has had only a few months to get NASA back to basics. Where Artemis III was scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2028, it will no longer. Now it will launch in 2027, never flying beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO) while it does rendezvous and docking tests, shades of Apollo 9. A second 2027 LEO test is also being considered.
Part of the Artemis Program includes a Moon-orbiting space station, the Lunar Gateway. It is to be assembled in stages, beginning with an initial module launch by a Falcon Heavy sometime in 2027. Subsequent SLS launches, including the Artemis IV mission, will deliver finishing modules if the Gateway remains part of the plan.
When envisioned, Lunar Gateway was to include a habitat with radiation shielding, a command control hub, multiple docking ports and a refuelling station in the event of a future mission to Mars.
Gateway is to feature Hall-Effect thrusters to keep in orbit around the Moon. With the revised timelines for Artemis missions, it is difficult to determine if or when Gateway will deploy. If the mission gets further redesigns, Gateway may be eliminated.
Artemis IV in early 2028 looks like the mission that will return NASA astronauts to the Moon. It may also deliver modules to add to the Lunar Gateway. On the other hand, Artemis IV may be Gateway-free, docking with an HLS in lunar orbit. The astronauts would then transfer and descend to the lunar surface, the first to walk on the Moon since 1972.
Should we put the date in our calendars? Considering the changes Isaacman is already instituting, I suspect further tinkering with Artemis to streamline the mission while ensuring the technology will work and keep the astronauts safe. Beyond this, the one driving issue pushing the Artemis timetable is a space race with China. China has announced plans to put taikonauts on the Moon by 2030. If 2028 or 2029 are missed by NASA, it may be a Chinese crew taking “One small step for man.”
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]]>NASA developed SLS and the Orion space capsule to succeed the Saturn V and Apollo Command Module. The resemblance between the two systems aimed at the Moon is uncanny. SLS is a one-way launcher that resembles the Saturn V rocket. The rocket and spaceship structure almost looks like a retread of the 1960s Apollo. The biggest difference lies in the solid rocket boosters, resurrected from the Space Shuttle era, that are strapped to the SLS first stage to increase thrust.
The Orion space capsule lies atop, eerily similar to the Apollo Command Module but bigger to handle a larger crew. Orion’s service module comes from the European Space Agency. This heat shield is supposed to be better than the one used for Apollo, with improvements designed to handle accelerated re-entry speeds. Tested for the first time during the uncrewed Artemis I mission, it proved wanting, prompting NASA to do a rethink and redesign.
To me, these elements in the Artemis Program represent a series of compounding mistakes. This week was the latest example of how American pork-barrel politics have compromised NASA’s ability to innovate, leaving it with an Apollo retread. The launch of Artemis II, the mission to send a crew of four beyond the Moon and back, had to be postponed until March. The reason given, the SLS sprang a hydrogen leak during fueling.
Artemis I was originally scheduled to launch in 2017. SLS development delays and technology glitches pushed that timeline back five years. NASA blamed funding cuts and COVID-19 for the delay. The truth, however, is that the SLS had numerous rocket engine, battery, and, guess what, hydrogen leak problems. Artemis I finally launched on November 16, 2022.
After Apollo, NASA needed a renewed purpose for human spaceflight. Getting to the Moon was done. What next? Apollo-Soyuz and Skylab were fillers while the Shuttle Program was under construction. The Shuttle was going to make low-Earth orbit (LEO) human spaceflight affordable. The Shuttle would deliver payloads to LEO at a fraction of the cost of the previous generations of launch vehicles. The Shuttle was to be reusable.
The first Shuttle, Columbia, suffered numerous technical glitches, sensor failures, heat shield issues and fuel leaks. Columbia took five years to get to the launchpad and then rolled back to the assembly building, where it was delayed for another two years. The first flight was in April 1981.
The Shuttle program flew 135 missions. Shuttles delivered the modules and infrastructure for assembling the International Space Station (ISS). Missions repaired and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope. Two missions failed with loss of crew. The program came to an end in July 2011, with the remaining ships mothballed and turned into exhibits.
The Shuttle Program never made human spaceflight cheaper or safer. Each mission was supposed to cost US$9.3 million but ended up averaging $1.5 billion.
The Artemis Program resembles NASA’s experience with the Space Shuttle. Both have gone way over budget. Both have experienced multi-year delays. The Shuttles flew more than once and could be refurbished. Currently, SLS with Orion has flown once. Only the capsule and the two solid-rocket boosters, mated to the SLS, are reusable.
NASA funding with the Apollo Program reached approximatley 4% of the US federal budget. Today, NASA’s share is 0.5%. Congressional requests amounting to pork-barrel projects have contributed to money misspent, and a mission design that incorporates obsolescence. The mission has been subjected to political interference from four different administrations.
The two Shuttle accidents have created a more safety-conscious NASA. Meanwhile, technological advances in materials, computing, and design have led NASA engineers to go through multiple redesigns. These redesigns have impacted both the SLS and Orion.
Then there are the private contractors who have promised deliverables by certain dates and missed these milestones. The SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) needed to ferry crews from Orion to the Moon and back remains missing in action. Based on a yet-to-be-proven design from SpaceX, it is years behind schedule.
Artemis III, the return of humans to the lunar surface, was to happen in 2024, but is now likely to launch no earlier than 2028.
There are alternatives for NASA that do not require either the SLS or Orion. NASA budgets commit $93 billion from Artemis II through IV. As designed, current missions lock NASA into pork-barrel contracts and jobs programs spread over 30 states. Politicians in Washington have the final say on NASA funding. Cutting some of the $93 billion would lead to job losses in congressional home districts, which wouldn’t go over well in election years.
A cutting-our-losses strategy, however, could reduce the cost of future Artemis missions. Three alternative mission scenarios could eliminate the need for the SLS. Two of these scenarios would eliminate Orion. The elimination of both would save billions.
Consider these Artemis mission alternatives:
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]]>The post Have A Say In Future Space Priorities For All Humanity – Part 1: Present Day To 2046 appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>Since the first satellite began circling the Earth in 1957, we have sent robotic spacecraft and a variety of living things to low-Earth orbit. Humans have visited the surface of the Moon. Next month, a crew of four will revisit the lunar environs, a prequel to future Moon landings.
Scientific missions have visited the planets, asteroids, and even comets here in our Solar System. Some missions have left the Solar System behind, heading out into the Milky Way Galaxy.
Most of our space experience has come from government space agency programs. What were a select few nations just a few years ago have now been joined by a growing number of countries and private companies pursuing projects in low-Earth orbit and beyond.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are two billionaires with visions of humanity’s space future. Should the rest of us go along? Should government agencies defer to private enterprise in advancing humanity’s future in space? Here’s your chance to have a say.
Mapping out humanity’s future space priorities and predicting where we will be in a decade, two decades, fifty years from now, and by 2101, is an interesting exercise in futurism. What follows are 7 achievements and milestones for the period from now to 2036, and 7 more for the period ending a decade later. Do you agree with my prognostication, or do you have your own take on our space future? Please let me know.
In Part 2, we will prognosticate about the milestones achievable by 2076 and 2101. In the meantime, let’s hear from readers what they think is likely to happen here in the 21st century.
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]]>The post Moon News: A Robot Excavator, Water on the Moon, and Likely Changes to the Artemis Program appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>In pursuit of the former, NASA has recently announced the development of a moon-mining robot called IPEx (In-situ Resource Utilization Pilot Excavator). As seen below, IPEx is a combination of a bulldozer and dump truck.
The design includes rotating, hollow cylinders and bucket drums that act as scoops. The latter will dig up the regolith. The drums are designed to rotate as they are filled by the bucket drums. The robot is being designed to handle up to 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of regolith per day. Not only will the regolith IPEx collects provide construction material for a future lunar settlement, but it also will be mined for oxygen and other useful elements. The oxygen is critical for both life support and chemical rocket fuel.
Eugene Schwanbeck is NASA’s IPEx Program Manager. He describes the technology stating:
“The innovative design of counter-rotating bucket drums, which dig simultaneously in opposing directions, enables IPEx to maintain a low mass while efficiently addressing the challenges of reduced gravity excavation.”
The robot is designed to run autonomously and is capable of navigating over lunar terrain in variable lighting conditions and in the Moon’s environment where temperature swings are significantly greater than anything experienced on Earth. Lunar days and nights are 14 Earth days long. Temperatures swing from 120 Celsius (250 Fahrenheit) during the day to as low as -250 Celsius (-410 Fahrenheit) in deep craters during the lunar night.
A flight-ready version of IPEx is expected to be finished in 2027. The deployment will follow sometime between 2027 and 2030. If it works well on the Moon, future iterations of IPEx will be used for mining the regolith of Mars.
NASA doesn’t want to have to bring everything from Earth needed to create a habitable permanent facility on the Moon. Critical to this strategy is ISRU (In-situ resource utilization). Finding water on the Moon is key to the NASA plan.
Water exists on the Moon. The key is where to find it in sufficient quantity for harvesting. Since the first Moon rocks came back from the Apollo missions, NASA has known the Moon’s rocks are wet. Water molecules are bound in the regolith which when heated release water vapour. IPEx, when it scoops up lunar regolith can become one way to find water with concentrations from 100 to 400 parts per million found embedded in mineral grains and volcanic glasses.
An overt water source that would readily be more available is surface and subsurface water in the form of ice found in permanently shadowed regions at the Moon’s poles as seen in the picture below.
The estimated size of areas that could be harvested for this type of water covers 40,000 square kilometres (15,444 square miles) near the Moon’s South Pole. That is why the Artemis Program plans to land there to establish the first permanent lunar habitat.
Lunar water will be used for life support, hydroponic cultivation, oxygen production, rocket fuel, radiation shielding and industrial applications. Every ton harvested on the Moon means payloads from Earth can bring other essential materials to support a permanent human presence there.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) has been flown once, in November 2022. The mission tested the rocket and the Orion space capsule with no crew aboard. The estimated cost for the test launch was $4.1 billion. The next Artemis mission, number 2, will cost easily as much and has been delayed by at least one year because of heat shield problems experienced by Orion in its first flight reentry.
The total cost of Artemis through this year is expected to approach $93 billion with $23.8 billion accounting for the SLS. Are these numbers sustainable for lunar exploration? Many in the United States think not. Among them is Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Donald Trump’s head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is mandated to find cost savings in the operation of the federal government.
SLS versions are called blocks. Block 1 flew in 2022 and will fly in both Artemis 2 and 3, the latter will be the first human crew mission to the lunar surface since Apollo. Later missions will use Block 1B. None of these SLS rockets will be reusable. Orion is designed for reuse but who knows if, in the end, it will prove that capability.
Back in 2019, I asked the question: When Will NASA Abandon the SLS Project? Now it appears that Boeing, the key contractor for the SLS is sensing the winds of change in Washington and has warned 400 of its employees that they may face layoffs beginning in
April 2025. With Elon Musk’s Starship and his influence with Trump on finding savings, SLS could find itself proverbially “lost in space.” If SpaceX can iron out the design flaw that caused the latest Starship to explode during a test flight, its reusability, capacity and lower cost, would make it a substitute for Artemis missions.
SpaceX is already contracted by NASA to fly an adapted Starship called the Human Landing System (HLS) during the Artemis 3 mission. If Starship proves itself in repeated tests this year, it could be bringing astronauts to the Moon on flights directly from Earth. The Lunar Gateway project could be repurposed or abandoned saving billions more.
NASA’s mission to return to the Moon may look very different before the end of this year. Musk has even suggested there is no need to return to the Moon and that Artemis should be redirected to put humans on the surface of Mars before the end of the decade. At least two optimal windows for flights to Mars should occur before 2030.
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]]>The post NASA, Artemis, and Mars Timelines – Part 2: Addressing Remaining Challenges appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>Before considering sending humans to Mars, NASA decided a return to the Moon would be a testbed for developing the technologies needed to get to Mars. The Artemis Program was seen as a stepping stone. Numerous delays have beset Artemis, however, from the beginning.
It required NASA to rebuild its integrated launch system technology that it formerly used for the Apollo Program. The result is the Space Launch System (SLS), a throwaway behemoth of a rocket that bears a resemblance to the Saturn V of the Apollo Program. The same is true of the Orion spaceship, a larger version of the Apollo space capsule.
In the first test of the technology, the Artemis I mission, an early version of the SLS was used to launch Orion beyond the Moon before it returned to an ocean landing on Earth. Examination of the spaceship indicated unexpected heat shield pitting requiring re-engineering that has delayed Artemis II by two years. The escalating mission costs of the entire program will reach $93 billion by the end of 2025.
When Artemis III returns astronauts to the Moon’s surface sometime in 2027, saner heads at the Agency may finally intervene to consider going to cheaper competing technologies from commercial operators. The solutions for subsequent Moon voyages may lie with NASA’s current commercial partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin. Both are already contracted to build Moon landers. Both have powerful reusable rocket technology that could end the need for the SLS.
In Part 1, we described the Mars agenda for SpaceX. The Starship is being designed for interplanetary travel. It is reconfigurable as the upcoming HLS version will show. The HLS will land on the Moon where there is no atmosphere. Starships have already landed on Earth in test flights. When SpaceX sends several Starships to Mars as it intends in the next few years, handling landings on the Red Planet should become feasible and eventually routine. But none of this answers the question of how safe the journey will be when humans fly to Mars and stay on its surface for protracted lengths.
Speaking of the Martian surface, when Perseverance was conceived, one of its tasks in exploring the Jezzero Crater was to dig up and scrape samples for future scientific examination. In a recent news release, a NASA spokesperson described the science of these samples as ground-breaking. Right now, however, they are packed in vials lying on the surface where Perseverance left them waiting to be picked up.
That was the purpose of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, to gather those samples and bring them back to Earth in 2033. The technology to do this was developed in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA). MSR project costs skyrocketed so NASA decided to delay the project and seek a less expensive way to get the Perseverance samples back.
The two options NASA is currently considering include:
For both cases, if NASA sticks to a crewed mission happening in 2035, MSR’s samples may become redundant, or if the crewed mission lands near the Jezzero Crater site, the astronauts could pick up the samples themselves.
Favourable launch windows determine when to send missions to Mars. How do you calculate these? The mathematics of two objects moving around the Sun at different speeds and on different trajectories determines when is the best time to launch.
It turns out to be approximately every 26 Earth months when everything aligns. This happens because while Earth orbits the Sun every 365.25 days, Mars orbits it every 1.9 Earth years. That means a spacecraft launched from Earth has to target a location where Mars will be and not where it is at the time of launch. The launch window periodic alignment allows for a direct trajectory.
Perseverance was launched in 2020 and took a direct trajectory to Mars. Its trip took 204 Earth days with an initial launch speed of just under 40,000 kilometres per hour (24,600 miles per hour) and after an interplanetary insertion burn an average cruising speed of 100,260 kph (62,300 mph) over the 470 million kilometres (292 million miles) trip.
NASA’s Odyssey or SpaceX’s Starship could duplicate the Perseverance fast trajectory. NASA, however, doesn’t plan for human spaceflight to Mars using the Perseverance voyage model. Instead, it plans for voyages lasting nine months and stays on the surface between 90 and 500 days to align favourable launch periods to return to Earth.
Think about the burden of onboard resources missions of this duration require lasting well over three Earth years. This isn’t a three-day journey to the Moon and a two-week stay before coming home. But doing the Moon could be good preparation for the leap to Mars although some say not.
The Apollo Program made six voyages of discovery to the Moon. Do we need to go back? Ask Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, and he will say no. He thinks the current Artemis Program is largely misdirection. Musk sees getting to Mars as essential to make humans an interplanetary species. Is he right?
Does the U.S. need to be spending $93 billion by the end of this year chasing a return to the Moon? Musk doesn’t think so and the new Trump-nominated NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, may agree.
I disagree with Musk but for other reasons. I have issues with the entire human space program going to places with deep gravity wells rather than building a space infrastructure of free-floating colonies using materials mined from captured or visited asteroids. This is a strategy that eliminates the burden of dealing with launch thrust requirements to escape bodies like Mars.
But since we are going down the route of making celestial bodies our destinations for the foreseeable space future, then the Moon appears to be the perfect place to test the technologies we need. The Moon as a test bed is only three days from Earth. If something goes wrong on Mars, without self-sufficiency, there is no nearby remedy.
Several key technologies need to be perfected to make living on the Moon viable. Lunar solutions will not be enough for Mars. The journey from the Earth to the Moon is a puddle jump compared to the one to Mars.
Protecting a crew from space threats over three days isn’t the same as keeping them healthy and alive for a six to nine-month voyage.
What are the technologies that need to be developed or perfected for the Martian project? Here are the ones that immediately come to mind:
So there you have it! There’s a lot of homework between now and those targeted dates mentioned in Part 1. Keeping all the irons in the fire for the duration and raising funds from public and private sources will be critical to making the interplanetary dream come true.
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]]>NASA has through its work produced spinoffs that have seen $7 to $14 in new revenue for every dollar spent and impacted food safety standards, terrestrial navigation systems, aerospace, telemedicine, materials science and other innovations. NASA dollars have inspired private enterprise to get into the business of space. Space companies are now a big thing in the United States and other countries. SpaceX’s recent evaluation is $350 billion.
The word “moonshot” comes from the audacity of the Apollo Program in the 1970s that put a human on the surface of the Moon in 1969. NASA wants the Artemis Program to be the next moonshot that will take humans back to the Moon and onto Mars.
Why go back to the Moon and then Mars? NASA cites its past achievements and the benefits from the science and technological innovation of Apollo and other agency activities to improve “the human condition.”
The following infographic outlines the decisions, relationships, capabilities and reasons for the Artemis Program addressing the when, who, what, where, how and why.
As for the when, the transportation systems represent the earliest objectives of the Moon to Mars architecture including launch systems, orbiters, landers, and surface exploration vehicles. Right now, major delays have pushed back Artemis milestone dates. Why?
Human activity in space has been limited to low-Earth orbit since the end of Apollo. Even in this sphere, the in-place infrastructure which includes the aging ISS, will need a refresh to support activities that take us to the Moon and eventually Mars. For example, in low-Earth orbit, getting back to Earth in an emergency takes hours, not days (remember Apollo 13) in the case of the Moon, or months in the case of Mars.
We have conditioned humans to long-term microgravity conditions within the protective envelope of low-Earth orbit. We haven’t conditioned them to micro and partial-gravity environments of the Moon and Mars which will require having humans condition and decondition their systems for extended durations. What will that do to the human body? We won’t know until we test our physical capabilities on the Moon before setting out on a journey to Mars and back.
We face infrastructure challenges for both the Moon and Mars. Much of what we build for the Moon should translate to a future mission to Mars, but much will not. For example, components and systems to support the long transit time between Earth and Mars cannot be duplicated in a three-day journey to the Moon. We will be able to leverage much from our lunar experience but not enough to meet all the challenges a voyage to Mars and back and a prolonged stay on the planet’s surface will present.
For the Moon, the first Artemis outward-bound objective, the South Pole is the destination. Apollo landings were in the mid-latitudes of the Moon. The longest stay on the surface during Apollo lasted three Earth days. Apollo destinations are out of the question because they would be in darkness half the time. That’s why the South Pole has been chosen where the Sun is continuously visible low on the horizon.
The South Pole terrain with its peaks, ridges and craters, provides both advantages and disadvantages. Getting around will require lunar vehicles capable of dealing with highly variable terrain. A big advantage with the Sun continuously visible will be access to uninterrupted solar power. Another advantage is the expected presence of water ice (hydrogen and oxygen) at the bottom of lunar craters. Abundant water ice means fuel and breathable air don’t have to be transported to maintain long-term habitability.
For Mars, NASA is working on developing small nuclear power generation systems. Subsurface ice on Mars will require delivering or building in-situ drilling rig and pipeline capacity.
Another challenge is the requirements for “a robust, secure communication and position, navigation, and timing system.” Apollo technology will not do. Data volume requirements will be astronomical with multiple simultaneous data streams and telemetry. The communication and data streaming challenges for Mars represent an even more significant challenge. Roundtrip communication delay will vary from 20 to nearly 45 minutes.
The energy needed to get to the Moon doesn’t compare to what will be needed for Artemis to get to Mars. The distance between the Earth and Moon varies by about 43,000 kilometres over time meaning it takes about the same amount of energy to get there and back. The closest Mars ever gets to Earth is 54.6 million kilometres. The furthest distance is 400 million kilometres. The energy requirements are highly variable depending on timing and the position of the two planets. Optimizing the best timing for a Mars mission means picking the shortest transit time and creating a waiting period on the planet for the return trip to occur at a similar optimal trajectory time.
It is difficult to believe that chemical propulsion systems will be adequate for a trip to Mars. NASA and commercial space companies are looking at alternate propulsion systems with nuclear, ion and other technologies under consideration. Perfecting these alternate methods of powering spaceflight will add years to the ready-for-mission timeline.
The architecture document for a Mars mission states, “shorter mission duration also results in shorter stay time at Mars.” What would be a shorter mission? A trajectory transit time of between 180 and 300 Earth days each way with a short stay of between 10 and 50 Earth-equivalent days on Mars, means a mission lasting two years. Lots of machine and human challenges are bound to occur when talking about such long-duration missions beyond the comparable comfort of low-Earth orbit.
Then there is food which doesn’t appear in the Moon to Mars Architecture Definition document. I’m not sure if this is an oversight or if NASA has it covered elsewhere.
Of course, Artemis objectives to reach the Moon and Mars can only come to fruition if there are three key sustainability commitments in place:
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]]>In Part 1, we looked at China’s space plans and a star named Gliese 710. In Part 2, you can read the first story describing the Europa Clipper and the search for life in the outer Solar System. The second story describes Bloomberg’s assessment of the Artemis Program boondoggle, the well-over-budget NASA-led project to return humans to the lunar surface.
The largest interplanetary probe ever launched is called the Europa Clipper. It took off for the Jovian system on October 14, 2024. The 6,000-kilogram (13,000-pound) spacecraft will take five years to reach Jupiter because it will take an indirect, gravity-assisted route swinging it by Mars and then back towards Earth before going on to Jupiter. The routing will save precious fuel to help extend the mission once it arrives in the Jupiter system.
The Clipper plans to make at least 49 flybys of Europa which is believed to contain a body of water, although yet to be confirmed, lying beneath its icy crust. Some scientists speculate that the amount of water is greater than all the Earth’s oceans combined.
It is all that water that makes Europa a compelling place to search for life elsewhere in the Solar System and the Universe. Why is that? Because life on Earth first originated in water.
If the Clipper’s instrumentation confirms this under-surface ocean, it will reinforce the theory of how it came to be. Scientists believe Jupiter is the reason for Europa’s watery interior. The giant planet and other inner Jovian moons exert gravitational tidal forces on Europa that have been keeping its interior warm. This tidal heating is an energy source that is producing interesting chemistry which is evident from deposits of carbon dioxide ice discovered on the moon’s surface. These deposits and the existence of an atmosphere make Europa even more intriguing. The deposits and atmosphere are related to cracks seen in the icy shell that is believed to be between 15 to 25 kilometres in thickness. Plume-like geysers called cryovolcanoes have been observed spewing subsurface contents into Europa’s atmosphere.
The few visible impact craters point to a surface terrain under constant rejuvenation. Surface areas given the descriptor, chaos terrain, provide further evidence of subsurface activity.
We have learned all of this from three previous spacecraft, Voyager, Galileo and Juno visits to the Jovian system as well as from observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and now the James Webb.
The Clipper’s onboard instrumentation is heavily shielded to withstand the radiation belts that circle Jupiter and its inner moons including Europa. It is hoped that the onboard instruments will unlock many of the moon’s secrets. These include:
Exobiologists can’t wait to confirm the existence of the subsurface ocean, its depth, volume, salinity and chemistry. They hope the radar identifies other water sources including pockets with the icy shell.
Exobiologists see in this ice moon a model for potentially habitable environments that expand our ideas of where life may exist in the Universe beyond the Goldilocks Zones that circle our Sun and other stars.
The Europa Clipper is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on April 11, 2030.
In Michael Bloomberg’s words, “There are government boondoggles, and then there’s NASA’s Artemis program.” He states his respect for science and space exploration but sees Artemis as “a colossal waste of taxpayer money.”
I repeatedly have criticized NASA’s approach to returning to the Moon using the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion capsule. See my posting in 2019 when I asked when will NASA abandon this largely throwaway approach that mimics the technology choices made during Apollo at the height of the Cold War.
Bloomberg lists the money burned so far at $23.8 billion for the SLS. He adds the $20 billion spent on the Orion capsule alone with the latest non-crewed flight demonstrating a faulty heat shield.
He notes $5 billion being spent on the Lunar Gateway Project, a cislunar space station with many questioning its need.
He describes future iterations of the SLS for later Artemis flights that will add $5.7 billion to the cost and require a new $2.7 billion launch tower.
He notes that each flight will come with a $1 billion price tag.
Meanwhile, he points to SpaceX which continues to make progress with a reusable alternative that has greater payload capacity and that can carry crews and cargo to the Moon and back.
Bloomberg calls it “celestial irony” that NASA and its Artemis partners are spending all this money on the SLS, Orion and Gateway when the latest demonstration of Starship and the Super Heavy Booster illustrates the speed of progress being made on it.
And finally, he asks “What on Earth are we doing?” as NASA cuts its science mission budgets to divert money to Artemis. Cancelled and postponed missions include the Mars Sample Return mission to bring back specimens collected by the Perseverance rover on Mars, the Veritas mission to study Venus, the Viper lunar rover, and the NEO Surveyor telescope, to catalogue Near-Earth asteroids to determine if, in the future, any of them could endanger life on Earth.
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When the Soviets and Americans were in the middle of the Cold War race to design and test nuclear weapons, the U.S. used a site northwest of Las Vegas to test atomic weapons. That site is the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) where you can find the world’s largest human-made crater spanning 390 metres (1,280 feet) in diameter. Called the Sedan Crater it was produced by an underground nuclear explosion in 1962 and is one of hundreds (see image above) to be found at the NNSS.
Today, NNSS provides a full-scale place for testing what lunar exploration will be like at the Moon’s South Pole when the Artemis astronauts land there. It is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas and saw 928 nuclear tests of which 100 were above ground while the rest were done underground beginning in 1963 with the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Before the Apollo landings on the Moon, NASA sent crews to train and test equipment at the site. They were sufficiently impressed by how easy it was for them to do lunar extravehicular activities during the Apollo missions.
Now for Artemis, astronauts are back at the Sedan Crater and its surroundings. Tara Bartlett, a scientist working at the NNSS describes its unique capabilities. “We can support large field operations in and around these craters.”
The site features a tower called Icecap that stands 46.3 metres (152 feet) tall, a similar height to the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) that will be used for the first Artemis mission returning to the lunar surface. The tower used to observe nuclear explosions will now serve a new purpose providing an elevated view of equal height to the one the astronauts will see upon landing on the Moon. From the HLS, astronauts can survey the surrounding craters at the Lunar South Pole experiencing something similar to their NNSS training.
Nick Downs is a geologist at NNSS. He sees Sedan Crater and its surroundings as a great place to train future Artemis mission crews to do quality lunar field geology. Downs states, “This is a good place to test in a safe and controlled environment, and it’s better to test equipment here rather than when you’re on the Moon for the first time.”
If ever there was a good use of space, one formerly used to test bombs for Nuclear Armageddon, this is one.
Was there merit in the Polaris Dawn mission and the show SpaceX put on, a five-day romp into space with four astronauts taking a Dragon capsule to and from space? The mission gave us two highlights.
We don’t know how much the mission cost because the amount has never been publicly disclosed. Based on other crewed missions involving NASA and using similar SpaceX technology and equipment, the cost amounts to hundreds of millions.
SpaceX ran the mission but Jared Isaacman, a technology billionaire entrepreneur, paid for it in full. He was also part of the crew and holds bragging rights now as the first civilian to poke his head into the vacuum of space outside an orbiting spacecraft.
Polaris Dawn publicity stated the mission had two specific purposes: an engineering one to test a SpaceX-designed extravehicular (EVA) spacesuit that could become standard equipment on future space missions, the Moon and Mars. The second purpose was to establish bragging rights by setting a new Earth-orbit altitude record of 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) for a crewed spacecraft. The last time any human and flown this far from the planet was in 1972.
The Dragon capsule had to be modified to incorporate handrails outside the hatch (see image above) where two in the crew emerged from the hatch to hold on for a birds-eye view of Earth with no window in between. Isaacman’s extravehicular romp lasted 8 minutes.
To do this because the Dragon capsule wasn’t designed with an airlock, the spacecraft had to equalize the external vacuum of space through depressurization exposing all four crew who donned EVA suits.
Hundreds of millions were spent on what was largely a space stunt. I can think of better ways to spend my money for a 5-day tour.
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]]>With numerous delays, this Mars Sample Return mission (MSR) has escalated in cost to U.S. $11 billion, and with timeline delays only reaching Earth circa 2040. By that time, other missions on their timelines are likely to land on Mars including the first human crewed ones.
NASA recently under pressure from the U.S. Congress related to escalating costs, decided to alter its original MSR plans. The agency published a request for proposals to collect and return the Perseverance samples at a lower cost and an earlier date. The submissions were received earlier this year and NASA has selected 7 proposals from the following:
Three of these proposals focus solely on the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) to launch the samples into orbit to rendezvous for the return-to-Earth mission. These have come from Aerojet Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman and Whittinghill Aerospace. SpaceX has proposed using the Starship for the mission. Blue Origin has proposed a version of the lunar lander that will be featured in a future Artemis mission.
NASA asked for realistic concepts, not necessarily ones that would be cheaper or faster to launch, land, and then return to deliver the samples back to Earth. Since the original MSR plans were being quashed, because they were “a dollar more and a day late,” it seems strange that the agency didn’t specify a lower cost and faster turnaround. The response to NASA’s request will involve each of the submitters to provide an interim and final report. The end goal will be to re-architect the mission with a path forward no later than early next year. Each of the seven will receive U.S. $1.5 million for their reports.
Jeff Gramling, Director of the MSR mission stated that NASA’s purpose was an “opportunity to hear what industry has to tell us…This is the agency wanting to follow through and make sure we haven’t missed anything before we establish the baseline for this mission.” One would assume Gramling wants to see reduced costs and faster timelines as priorities, otherwise, why put a hold on the original plan?
There is another program focused on exploring Mars that will eventually lead to humans landing there. It is the Artemis Program which initially will return human crews to the lunar surface as a prequel to the ultimate goal of sending them to Mars sometime in the 2030s. The return to the Moon through Artemis is not only about establishing a human presence permanently but also about being a proving ground for the technology needed to go to Mars and stay there for at least a month before returning to Earth.
NASA in 2022 unveiled a set of twenty-year objectives involved in sending human crews to Mars. The plan included 50 issues that would need to be addressed. At that time, MSR was still seen as the fastest way to get Martian samples returned to Earth for scientists to study. Now it seems that Perseverance’s sampling efforts may see humans retrieving them instead.
NASA is in a new space race. No longer are the Russians the key competition. China has announced its plans to send taikonauts to the Moon by 2030, and to Mars by 2033.
Then there is SpaceX which was founded by Elon Musk to turn humans into a multiplanetary species. On the SpaceX site, he states:
“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”
First, Starships will have to get to Mars where the colonists it brings will use technology to erect a habitat and establish the means to survive with little in the way of receiving continuous support from Earth. That means using Martian local resources from its atmosphere and underground to establish habitability. Eventually, there would be a Martian city that would serve as the launch gateway to the rest of the Solar System and beyond.
When did SpaceX expect to achieve its first Starship landings? Originally Musk wanted to send an unmanned Starship mission to Mars in 2018. Starship wasn’t yet built by then. The timeline got pushed back to 2024 and then 2026 and 2028. Starship just flew its fourth test flight which was suborbital with no humans aboard. It doesn’t seem like it will likely meet the 2026 or 2028 dates for going to Mars.
Looking at the future feasibility of Starship missions to Mars has generated a paper published recently in the journal Nature. It assumes two uncrewed missions bringing essential equipment to Mars in 2027 followed by two crewed missions in 2029. Mars reaches a favourable position for launches from Earth approximately every two years.
After looking at all parameters, the paper concludes “With the information currently available a Mars mission with Starship is not feasible.” It is not feasible for lots of reasons including the risks, costs, resource requirements, and more.
Whether robots collect Perseverance samples or humans on future Mars missions do it, one thing is certain, state actors like China, agencies like NASA and companies like SpaceX intending to go to the Red Planet continue to underestimate the financial and human costs as well as the timelines needed to make a go of it.
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