WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson defended the cost and schedule of the agency’s efforts to explore the moon Artemis, even as officials hinted at the possibility of changes to an upcoming mission.
At a May 23 hearing, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (DN.H.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee, pressed Nelson on Artemis-related spending and suggested the agency convene an independent review of those costs .
She asked Nelson to describe “what NASA is doing to hold contractors accountable for cost overruns and schedule delays,” including whether the agency withheld payments to contractors for those cost overruns. She did not cite specific Artemis cases, but rather past studies of the program’s overall costs, including one estimate by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that each of the first four Space Launch System/Orion launches would cost 4, 2 billion dollars.
Nelson said companies are “on the hook” for bonus payments if they underperform. He also highlighted NASA’s use of commercial partnerships for Artemis, such as the Human Landing System program, which uses fixed-price contracts.
“Given the high cost, has NASA considered an independent review board for the study?” Sheheen asked, citing the benefits of independent reviews of the James Webb Space Telescope program when it ran into additional overruns and delays late in its development.
Nelson argued that no such review was necessary. “We’re constantly looking at Artemis with different eyes,” he said, citing reviews by the OIG as well as the Government Accountability Office. “The fact is, when you go to the moon to go to Mars, it’s difficult.”
NASA officials have actually expressed some frustration with the level of external control over Artemis. The agency’s response to the OIG’s latest Artemis-related audit, regarding the agency’s readiness for the Artemis 2 mission, complained that the OIG did not find issues that had not already been addressed and that the work with the auditors had caused “disruption to the ongoing workflow and priorities ” for those working on the upcoming mission.
That Artemis 2 mission remains scheduled for launch in September 2025, a “realistic date,” Nelson told the subcommittee’s ranking member, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), despite ongoing work on the Orion heat shield and other technical issues. However, Nelson emphasized that “we don’t fly until it’s ready.”
This will be followed in September 2026 by Artemis 3, the first crewed landing. “Artemis 3, if you compare it to the Apollo program, is a combination of Apollo 9, 10 and 11,” he said. “It’s a tall order, and if we land, it depends on SpaceX having a lander ready.”
Nelson’s use of “if” regarding the Artemis 3 landing raised some eyebrows. Nelson said that SpaceX has “achieved all of its milestones” so far in developing the lunar lander version of their Starship vehicle that will be used on Artemis 3. However, agency officials have publicly questioned SpaceX’s ability to prepare the lander Starship on time, and suggested that NASA might change the mission of Artemis 3 if Starship fell behind schedule. There have been more recent reports that NASA is exploring options for Artemis 3 that are not suited to a manned lunar landing.
This issue arose during the Lunar Surface Science Workshop online session on May 23. “We are fundamentally focused on Artemis 3 as a human return mission to the Moon,” said Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis 3 mission manager, when asked about potential alternative mission profiles.
However, he acknowledged that the agency is working on alternative concepts. “If we run into problems, we might choose offframp,” he said. “We’re doing exercises internally on what to do,” but he didn’t reveal what might trigger the shutdown or what those alternatives would describe.
Sarafin said NASA is closely monitoring the “series of tests” for Starship, including one planned for next year to demonstrate fuel transfer between two Starship vehicles, a key technology needed to refuel the Starship lunar lander. “If any of them show results that are unsatisfactory,” he said of those tests, “it will take us longer.”
