Nonetheless, the plan is to spend 79 months developing HLS, which is “13 months shorter than the average for NASA projects. “SpaceX used more than 50 percent of its total schedule to reach” Preliminary Design Review (PDR) while NASA uses only about 35 percent, and the “HLS program plans to use nearly 14 percent of its total schedule to proceed from PDR” to the next major milestone, Key Decision Point-C, while NASA projects use just 4.2 percent. Although the PPP model is intended to take advantage of efficiencies in the private sector that conceptually enable faster development, GAO found that’s not happening here. GAO looked at the status of the HLS and spacesuit programs and at how long it typically takes NASA to develop new technologies. NASA already uses this procurement model for the commercial cargo and crew systems that resupply the International Space Station. The companies retain ownership and are expected to find other customers to close the business case. Overall, GAO said NASA’s FY2024 budget request includes $12.4 billion over 5 years for these two systems. Axiom was selected in 2022 and GAO said the amount NASA awarded for these spacesuits is $229 million. SpaceX received a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 for the first HLS. Both agreements are Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) where NASA and the company share development costs and NASA agrees to purchase services under firm fixed-price contracts. Axiom Space is developing the spacesuits. SpaceX is under contract to provide the HLS for Artemis III and IV using a version of its Starship vehicle. Note the astronauts at the bottom of the lander for scale. Illustration of SpaceX’s Starship on the surface of the Moon. The two critical pieces of hardware still early in development are the Human Landing System (HLS) to take astronauts from lunar orbit down to and back from the surface, and the spacesuits they need to wear on the surface. However, 2025 remains the date on the books. Even high ranking NASA officials acknowledge the challenges ahead and hint at a delay to 2026 or perhaps flying a different mission. Those dates have been the subject of considerable skepticism in the aerospace community and Congress since 2019 and remain so today. By the end of Biden’s first year in office, however, NASA conceded 2024 wasn’t possible and 2025 became the new target. He wasn’t reelected, but his successor, President Biden, is similarly enthusiastic about space exploration and adopted that goal. At the time, NASA was aiming for 2028, but Vice President Mike Pence, as chair of the White House National Space Council, suddenly pulled it forward by four years so it would happen during a second Trump term if he was reelected. astronauts to once again set foot on the Moon. In 2019, the Trump Administration set 2024 as the date for U.S. Flight profile for Artemis III presented at NASA Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee meeting, November 17, 2023. Once in lunar orbit, they will transfer into a SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) that will take them down to the surface and bring them back to Orion for the trip home. The astronauts will travel to the Moon in a NASA Orion capsule launched by NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. NASA’s existing schedule calls for Artemis III to take place one year later at the end of 2025. Artemis II is the crewed flight test scheduled for the end of 2024. In this fourth congressionally-directed review of Artemis, GAO focused on the Artemis III mission, the one that will put astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo.Īrtemis I was the successful uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft last year. If development of the Human Landing System and lunar spacesuits, both being procured as Public-Private Partnerships, follows the average timeline for NASA programs, early 2027 is more likely. The Government Accountability Office’s latest report on NASA’s Artemis program is skeptical that the agency can return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2025, the current plan.
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