NASA Boss Resets Moon Lander Program

Today, Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy reset NASA’s Moon program.

Sean Duffy announced today that he was re-opening NASA’s HLS contract. As a justification, Duffy stated that SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander was behind schedule and its delays put at risk NASA landing astronauts on the Moon by 2029. He added that Starship’s delays would open the door to the People’s Republic of China beating the United State and its Artemis partners to the Moon.

By stating his reasons for reopening NASA’s HLS contract, Interim NASA Administrator Duffy made public that NASA saw what many in and out of NASA have known for well over a year.

SpaceX’s Starship wouldn’t make an Artemis III Moon landing, planned for sometime in 2027.

People with extensive experience in space testified earlier in February and September that Starship wouldn’t be ready to land by Artemis IV’s 2028 launch, Artemis V’s 2029 launch, or even by 2030.

It isn’t as though there haven’t been hints of delays in Starship meeting its commitment to land astronauts on the Moon by Artemis III.

In a June 8, 2023 SpaceNews article, NASA concerned Starship problems will delay Artemis 3, it was reported that in a June 7th National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board meeting then-Exploration System Missions Directorate Associate Administrator Jim Free raised concerns that the lack of progress of SpaceX’s Starship could delay Artemis III mission.

In an August 8, 2023 NASA media event, NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Preparations: Latest News and Updates, Jim Free commented that he and his team had just met with SpaceX at Boca in the last week for a 12-hour work day to get up to speed on where SpaceX was on meeting its lunar lander contract and its commitments. He then said that NASA, “…needed to digest what we heard.” At some point later, Free mentioned that NASA’s HLS contract terms would have to be updated, as happens when circumstances change.

In an episode of 60 Minutes, NASA’s pricey mission to send U.S. back to moon faces technical challenges, that aired on March 5, 2024, when questioned by 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker about the progress of SpaceX’s Starship, Free disclosed that SpaceX had not hit the technical milestones to date, which was concerning given the number of flight Starship needed to make to give NASA the confidence it needed to put astronauts on it.

On Feb. 26 of this year, during a House Space Subcommittee hearing, Step by Step: The Artemis Program and NASA’s Path To Human Exploration of the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, in questioning from Rep. Guy Self, Dr. Brian Dunbar and Dr. Scott Pace made clear that SpaceX’s Starship wouldn’t make a lunar landing before 2030. Dr. Dumbacher testified that Starship had fallen so far behind schedule that it would not meet its Artemis III commitment to land astronauts on the Moon and that retaining the Starship lander all but assured that China would land first.

This was reinforced by former NASA Administrator Jim Bridestine in a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race, held on a Sept. 3 of this year. Starting at 40:55 in his testimony, Bridenstine made a detailed presentation of why the United States was set to lose the Moon race to the People’s Republic Of China.

Bridenstein started-off by describing the Artemis programs that are in good shape.

“Number one, we have the SLS rocket, which it is the most powerful rocket ever built and Senator Cruz mentioned, yes, it has had its problems in the past, it has been expensive, it had overruns, all of those things, but it’s behind us, it’s done, we need to use it. We have the Orion crew capsule, which quite frankly is the, a shiny object in this whole thing. The Orion crew capsule is not only usable today but ultimately the cost is going down because more and more of it is reusable every time we use the Orion Crew Capsule. Those two elements are in good shape.”

Then Bridenstine moved on to the bad news.

“But I will say what we don’t have today. Here’s what we don’t have today.

We don’t have a landing system for the Moon.” Bridenstine went on to describe how the interim NASA leadership decided that, “…instead of buying a Moon lander, we are going to buy a rocket.”

Bridenstine went on to tell Congress how SpaceX’s Starship isn’t the solution, “This is an architecture that no NASA Administrator that I’m aware of would have selected had they had the choice.”

Why? Because of its complexity and avenues through which a lunar mission is put at risk.

“We need to launch Starship. That first Starship…it a fueling depot that is in orbit around the Earth. Then we need to launch…nobody really knows, nobody knows, but it could be up to dozens of additional Starships to refuel the first Starship. So imagine launching Starship over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over…dozens of times, no delays, no explosions to refuel the first Starship. Then once it’s fully refueled, that than Starship has to fuel another Starship that is in fact human rated, which that process hasn’t even started yet.”

Is that the only problem with the Starship HLS architecture? Far from it. Bridenstine went on,

“By the way, that whole in space refueling thing has never be tested either. We are talking about cryogenic liquid oxygen and cryogenic liquid methane being transferred in space, never been done before, and we’re going to do it dozens of times, and then we’re going to have a human rated Starship that is refueled that goes all the way to the Moon. Now, when it goes to the Moon, we don’t know how long it can be there because it’s [propellant] is boiling-off the entire time it’s in orbit around the Moon…we don’t know how long it can do that, but while it’s there we have to launch the SLS, we have to launch the Orion, the European Service Module, we have to have astronauts and crew already to go, and they have to orbit the Moon themselves in that window, that window when Starship is around the Moon, and they have to dock around the Moon, and they have to transfer from the Orion to the Starship, it has to go down and land.”

What Bridenstine didn’t mention were the other serious issues with the Starship HLS. Those will be addressed in later articles.

SpaceX, especially its founder and CEO Elon Musk, will say that its Starship lunar lander will be ready to land astronauts on the Moon by 2027. But the facts outweigh any claims SpaceX or Musk might make about achieving that goal.

Some will say that by reopening NASA’s HLS contract, Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has overstepped his mandate. After all, he’s just an interim administrator. But Sean Duffy has a mandate from the current Administration. He was nominated by the Trump Administration, and confirmed by the Senate, to serve as the Secretary of Transportation. Later, Sean Duffy was assigned as Interim NASA Administrator by the Trump Administration.