Moonbound Artemis II astronauts stay focused despite NASA uncertainty

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — It could be less than nine months before humanity ventures back to the moon, even if only to fly around it. The people set to make that flight were back on the Space Coast on Wednesday to log time with their ride, the Orion spacecraft.

First up, the crew of Artemis II with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will do something they’ve never done before.

“We’ll get suited up in the launch and entry suits. We will head over to the (Multi-Payload Processing Facility) and we will get in our vehicle,” Wiseman said during a press conference beforehand. “For the first time the four of us will be in the Orion spacecraft.”

Koch confirmed the launch atop the Space Launch System rocket from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-B could come even earlier if things go right.

“April is the official date. We are always as a team, looking for opportunities to launch sooner, and some of those opportunities are as early as February,” she said.

Keeping the mission on pace is something all four agreed could help garner more public and political support amid growing criticism because of Artemis delays and costs.

“We do not shy away from the reality that we’re in. We really think that Artemis is the right program at the right time to get a sustained human presence on and around the moon and off Mars,” Wiseman said. “We believe it. So we’re going to go fly Artemis II. We’re going to proceed with this mission. We’re going to execute as perfectly as we can with the team on the ground. We’re gonna make the whole nation and the world proud. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

The quartet will be the first humans to fly to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, although only to test out Orion by flying around it and not landing. It’s the first time humans will be on board the Orion spacecraft, a version of which flew to the moon without crew on the Artemis I mission in 2022. A second human spaceflight of Orion is slated for as early as summer 2027 that would return humans to the lunar surface.

After that, though, just how the Artemis program continues its efforts to support moon and Mars missions has been in political crosshairs.

Earlier this year, President Trump’s proposed budget sought to kill off the Orion program and Space Launch System rocket after Artemis III. Any missions beyond that would instead rely on commercial partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Glover added their isn’t much more they can do now for an uncertain future of the Artemis program.

“We don’t know what a year from now is going to look like — a year and a half from now — but we know exactly what we have to do for the next six months,” Glover said. “We’re a part of a team that is focused and knows what we have to do.”

A Senate push to support SLS and Orion past Artemis III has already secured some funding as part of Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” and Congress has outlined continued support for existing Artemis mission programs in their own proposed budgets. That means missions like Artemis IV and V using SLS and Orion may still see the light of day, but Glover said no matter what the path forward, executing this first crewed mission is the best way to get political support.

“I think we could worry about a lot of things that we can’t affect, but we can affect mission success. And so we are clear-eyed on making Artemis II a success, and that’s the best way to get them to care, to invest and to decide and change behaviors,” Glover said. “And it also is the best way to ensure that there may be something beyond Artemis II.”

Another concern for the mission is the reduction in workforce that has begun since Trump took office, with more than 4,000 NASA employees having either retired or taken a buyout since January.

“The mission management team and our team leadership, they are intact,” Wiseman said. “They are sound. The best part to me is that we talk about that exact topic at every high-level meeting we have. ‘Where are our numbers?’ ‘Are losing critical folks?’ ‘Are we extending critical folks?'”

Wiseman said the four were going to meet this week for the first time new interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, who recently took on the role in addition to his job as the Secretary of Transportation.

Wiseman noted their roles as ambassadors help solidify program support, and the goals of getting back to the moon cross the political aisle.

“There are no receptions like we get in a bipartisan meeting on the Hill,” he said. “When we walk in there, it is so clear that this is what the nation wants to go do, and this is what our political leadership wants to go do.”

Not hitting its original launch targets and its ballooning budgets have driven criticism of the Artemis program. A NASA Office of the Inspector General audit noted in late 2023 that by the time Artemis III flies, the nation will have spent more than $93 billion on the program since its inception in 2012.

Artemis I didn’t fly until November 2022, and some of the unforeseen damage suffered by the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield caused Artemis II to beg off a plan to lift off as early as 2024. The solution wasn’t to change the heat shield and instead adjust the return trajectory, but the Artemis II crew all said they have faith in the decision.

“Anytime you talk about fire, anytime you talk about entry and heat shields, talk about parachutes, these are high-risk things … They have to work. And so I appreciate all that nudging and poking and prodding that they’ve caused,” Glover said. “They have made us sharpen our pencils and put more due diligence, more vigilance in that process.”

The plan is to give Artemis III’s Orion spacecraft a newly designed heat shield, but because of the push to not delay Artemis II even further, teams signed off on the flight path change to lower the risk of a repeat of what was seen on Artemis I.

“I think we’ve done it, and so I think the crew is comfortable because of that team,” Glover said. “We know how many people are looking at this, so I think at the end of the day, they were thinking about us and our families when they were doing their jobs.”

_____