ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA is about to light a $4.1 billion candle to launch the first mission in its Artemis program to the moon. The pricey pie has seen ballooning costs and delays in the last decade with slices heading to dozens of aerospace companies across the nation.
On Friday, representatives from several of those companies joined NASA’s Jim Free, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, to outline progress for future missions while also promising the reduce the costs.
“I hope that everyone takes some pride nationally for what we’ve been able to do and where we are today,” Free said. “That’s not been without difficulty. But today we’re here to talk about the successes we’ve had of getting to the pad and developing this hardware for our long-term exploration program.”
Artemis I, which is a combination of the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion spacecraft and the mobile launcher, is set to blast off from Kennedy Space Center during a two-hour window that opens at 8:33 a.m. Monday with backup attempts available on Friday, Sept. 2, and Monday, Sept. 5. That uncrewed flight aims to be a 42-day mission that will send Orion to orbit the moon dozens of times before returning to Earth to splash down in the Pacific Ocean.
The primary goal is to make sure Orion can survive what will be the fastest-ever reentry for a human-rated spacecraft paving the way to support the crewed Artemis II mission also to orbit the moon slated for no earlier than May 2024. Artemis III would then be as early as 2025, a mission that looks to return humans, including the first woman, to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.
When originally announced by NASA in 2012, the first launch was to have taken place by as early as 2016 with expected costs of $500,000 per launch. The cost projection for each launch has increased to more than eight times higher per launch through the first four missions, according to estimates by a November 2021 audit for NASA’s Office of the Inspector General.
By 2025, which would include launches through Artemis III and preparations for Artemis IV, the cost is expected to top $93 billion.
That taxpayer money has gone to more than 3,000 suppliers in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. A giant chunk has gone to Boeing, the lead contractor on the 212-foot-tall core stage, which is powered by four repurposed RS-25 engines from the space shuttle era built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Northrop Grumman is providing two solid rocket boosters per launch. All combined they will provide 8.8 million pounds of thrust that will make SLS the most powerful rocket to have ever lifted off from Earth surpassing the Saturn V rockets used 50 years ago for Apollo.
The Orion capsule, which was saved from the defunct Constellation program from the 2000s has been built by Lockheed Martin, while other parts of Artemis I that will help send Orion on its way to the moon have been provided by United Launch Alliance and Airbus via the European Space Agency.
On the ground, aerospace firm Jacobs has built out the mobile launcher while also spearheading the launch pad needs with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems team based at KSC. Jacobs executive Randy Lycans said he expects labor costs to drop as the missions progress.
“We want this to be a 30-year sustainable program as NASA has talked about,” Lycans said. “So we realize we all have a part to save money, to be more efficient as we go forward, to bring in new technology.”
Free was also optimistic about just how many tangible pieces of the first four missions are already in hand or in the works.
“Hardware-rich is a great place to be. Artemis I is that first step down this path when we talk about sustained exploration on the lunar surface and getting onto Mars,” he said.
The core stage is near completion for Artemis II at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, with the timeline and costs dropping from the estimated $2.2 billion spent on the first core stage. Boeing was dinged by the audit as one of the primary drivers of rising cost, but future core stage’s construction are expected to come in at lower prices.
Already at Kennedy Space Center are the Orion capsules for Artemis II and III while the capsule for Artemis IV is under construction at Michoud and expected to arrive to KSC in early 2023.
“That’s going to put us exactly where we need to be,” said Lockheed Martin’s director of Orion production Kelly DeFazio. “Here at Kennedy Space Center with three spacecraft in flow at once.”
She said work on the fifth Orion was already in the works, and that by the time it’s fully formed, it will be taking advantage of reused parts from previously flown capsules that could drive down costs from what has been estimated to be $1 billion per capsule through the first three missions.
“Lockheed Martin is committed to reduce the Orion production contract to deliver spacecraft 50% cheaper than we were from the early stages of the flight hardware,” DeFazio said.
Orion actually flew a test flight in 2014, and the Artemis I capsule is reusing a flight battery and some other small parts, but Artemis II’s capsule will reuse 16 components from Artemis I. Beyond that it gets more complex. By the sixth Orion flight, Lockheed could be reusing up to 5,000 parts.
“It’s the way we need to start shifting the risk from the government to the industry and make sure that we are all driving our costs down for that sustainable future because we absolutely are here for making Artemis a program for decades to come and that’s the way we’re going to do it,” she said.
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