“NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama have signed an agreement to advance sustainable human exploration of the Moon. Japan will design, develop, and operate a pressurized rover for crewed and uncrewed exploration on the Moon. NASA will provide the launch and delivery of the rover to the Moon as well as two opportunities for Japanese astronauts to travel to the lunar surface.” More
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Keith’s note: IM-1 landing has landed. My lunar landing talking head dance card for today (so far):
Keith’s note: According to GAO: “NASA has made progress demonstrating key capabilities needed to support its Artemis missions. …Despite this progress, NASA still faces several challenges:”
Keith’s note: On Wednesday evening I appeared on CGTN to talk about the launch of a cargo spacecraft to China’s Tiangong and the future of the Chinese space station program [audio]. A few minutes later I appeared on the Scripps TV network and all of its affiliates talking about Astrobotic’s peregrine and sending humans back to the Moon. [audio].
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Keith’s note: According to NASA PAO “NASA will hold a media teleconference at 1:30 p.m. EST Tuesday, Jan. 9, to provide an update on the agency’s lunar exploration plans for the benefit of all under Artemis. Audio of the briefing will stream live on NASA’s website.” So … what will be discussed? According to Reuters: “Senior NASA officials in recent months have been mulling plans to move the inaugural Artemis astronaut landing to the fourth mission, giving SpaceX and other contractors more practice before making the first such landing in half a century. NASA officials presented that option to the agency’s senior leadership last month, but it could not be determined if it chose that path. It was also unclear what the new target dates for the initial Artemis missions would be.” In 2004 NASA announced that America was going back to the Moon. 20 years later and that is still 3-4 years ahead. In 1961 NASA was challenged to go to the Moon by 1970. It got there early. When we did not know how to go to the Moon we did so faster and much cheaper. Now that we know a lot more about how to go to the Moon it takes us longer to repeat what was once so easy to do. What’s up with that? Update: here is NASA’s release. I live tweeted the presser on @NASAwatch
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Keith’s note: According to NASA PAO: “During the review, NASA also began to define potentially viable and affordable opportunities for new programs and projects that close capability gaps. NASA will share the results of this year’s Architecture Concept Review cycle early next year. This will include an update to the agency’s Architecture Definition Document and associated white papers, which provide additional detail on results from this year’s strategic analysis cycle. Both the updated Architecture Definition Document and white papers will be made available on NASA’s Moon to Mars architecture webpages.” Meanwhile, based on the latest GAO report, earlier GAO and OIG reports, uncertain budgets, cost overruns, schedule delays etc., you gotta wonder when NASA is going to formally fess up and say that the Moon landing date is “NET [year]”.
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Keith’s note: 56 Nations have signed the Antarctic Treaty and 33 have signed the Artemis Accords. Given more than a half century of global, peaceful collaboration in Antarctica we can now work toward a similar mode of cooperation in space – for everyone, everywhere. Alas, you’d think that on #AntarcticaDay that NASA OIIR or NASA PAO or someone at NASA HQ might stop to note the resonance between these two similar efforts. A worthy goal would be for NASA to seek to equal – and perhaps surpass – the size and extent of the successful Antarctic Treaty. But no. They just do photo ops at embassies.
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Keith’s note: According to GAO: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is preparing to land humans on the moon for the first time since 1972 in a mission known as Artemis III. Since GAO’s September 2022 report (GAO-22-105323), NASA and its contractors have made progress, including completing several important milestones, but they still face multiple challenges with development of the human landing system and the space suits. As a result, GAO found that the Artemis III crewed lunar landing is unlikely to occur in 2025. In July 2023, NASA stated that it is reviewing the Human Landing System schedule.
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Keith’s note: Several people are live tweeting a NASA Advisory Council HEO committee meeting – a public, on-the-record, official advisory body of the federal government chartered under FACA. Wayne Hale, who is departing from NAC service, offered a candid, thoughtful, and accurate assessment of the nature of the Artemis program and how it is not suited for anything like the “space race” that Bill Nelson et al love to claim that it is. So … what do members of this FACA committee say? Comments that can be summarized as: So what Wayne. That may be true but we need to spin it as a “race” so as to garner and maintain political support. These FACA committee members are openly approving a dishonest approach by the NAC – and NASA – to steer public discussion of a taxpayer-funded activity for political reasons – not transparent and accurate ones. Do these NAC committee Einsteins understand that this is a public meeting? One has to wonder if the OGC and OIG are listening to this meeting.
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Keith’s note: How is NASA going to achieve all of its forward-leaning diversity goals if the states where the bulk of its activities are conducted (Florida, Texas, Alabama) – and where their work force lives – seem to go out of their way to thwart the intent of these efforts? Large numbers of space industry workers run the risk of not being welcome there as they pursue the dream of exploring space. I have no answers. But I am pointing this issue out whenever I see it. According to “Anti-Trans Laws Force Engineer to Quit Job Helping NASA With Moon Missions“ published in Futurism, “As electrical engineer Robin Witt told The Stranger, Florida’s increasingly extreme anti-transgender laws left Witt, a transgender woman, no choice but to quit her job at a NASA-contracted engineering firm called ERC — a heartwrenching decision that, according to Witt, cost her a lifelong dream. … And though NASA might be putting diversity at the public center of its Artemis missions, it seems that the less-visible folks behind the Artemis rockets and other missions – one of whom, in this case, was forced to choose between their human rights and their dream role – are getting left behind.” More below
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