To The MOOOON!

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency’s approach to moving up a human lunar landing from 2028 to 2024 will focus first on speed and then on sustainability.

In a plenary speech at the 35th Space Symposium here April 9, Bridenstine said the new approach the agency is developing in response to the goal of a human lunar landing in five years announced by Vice President Mike Pence two weeks ago will involve many of the same elements of NASA’s original plans, but in a revised order.

“All of those elements that were necessary to getting humans to the surface of the moon in 2028, all those elements still exist. The plan is still the same,” he said. That includes, he said, development of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, a lunar Gateway in orbit around the moon, and lunar landers.

What will change, he said, is the schedule for developing some of those elements, which will be split into two phases. “The first phase is speed. We want to get those boots on the moon as soon as possible,” he said. “Anything that is a distraction from making that happen we’re getting rid of.”

That emphasis on speed includes launching Exploration Mission (EM) 1, an uncrewed Orion test flight, on the first flight of the SLS in 2020, to be followed by the first crewed Orion mission, EM-2, “as soon as possible thereafter.”

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NASA published the presoliciation for the lunar ascent system.

The NASA Administrator appointed Sirangelo to oversee the lunar plans.

NASA started testing the Gateway station hab modules.

NASA and Boeing hope to have the first stage core for the SLS done by the end of the year.

ESA has started designing the Gateway's deepspace airlock.