While assembly of the Space Launch System rocket continues at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA and its prime contractors supporting the Artemis program are arguing for the continuity of the program’s current architecture. The statements come as some in the space community are arguing that the U.S. should bypass the Moon and focus on Mars exploration instead.
Speaking during a panel at the annual SpaceCom conference in Orlando in January, Kirk Shireman, the vice president of Human Space Exploration and the Orion Program Manager for Lockheed Martin said he’s telling his workforce to stay the course as the new administration continues reforms across multiple other areas of the federal government.
“At least every four years, or likely every four years, an administration changes and there’s uncertainty,” Shireman said. “The best thing we can do is keep your head down and work as hard as you can and do the things that our nation tasked us to do.”
As of February 2025, the first crewed flight in the Artemis program, the Artemis 2 mission, is scheduled to launch no later than April 2026. Some have speculated that with the nomination of businessman and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman to be next NASA Administrator, that there may be a push to shift either the agency’s method of getting to the Moon away from the SLS rocket or alter the Artemis program radically to put a greater emphasis on Mars. Isaacman himself hasn’t made any public comments explicitly about the Artemis program since his nomination.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has continuously emphasized his desire for SpaceX to help lead the charge for human exploration on Mars, in large part by using the company’s nearly 400-foot-tall Starship rocket. Following the sixth launch of the rocket in November, he posted to his social media site, X, “I am highly confident that we can send several uncrewed Starships to Mars in 2 years. If those ships don’t increment the crater count on Mars, then crewed ships can be sent in 4 years.”
In January, in response to a post on X about the practicality of Mars, Musk replied, “No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”
The discussion around Mars also gained increased attention when President Donald Trump said during his inauguration speech that the U.S. “will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”
Musk is an ardent supporter of President Trump and spent more than $277 billion to back then candidate Trump and other Republican candidates, according to campaign finance records reviews by CBS News. Musk also manages the Department of Government Efficiency as a “special government employee” tasked with finding areas to reduce federal spending.
Shireman said he doesn’t foresee a massive shakeup in the Artemis program since President Trump oversaw the establishment of the Artemis program in 2019, during his first administration.
“What we need to do is go tell the people in the new administration and anyone else we can talk to about this is ‘Hey, the fastest way to get humans back on the Moon is to stay the course,” Shireman said. “Things take a long time to build and certify and if you throw them away every four years and start over, that’s probably the slowest and most expensive thing we can do.”
Matt Ramsey, the Artemis 2 Mission Manager, added that NASA’s priority is to “focus on the most important thing and the most important thing is Artemis 2.”
NASA pushed back date of that mission multiple times mainly due to questions about the readiness of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield, which experienced unexpected char loss during the Artemis 1 mission. NASA ultimately determined that gases were able to build up within the ablative outer layer, called Avcoat, which “were not able to vent and dissipate as expected,” the agency said in December.
“This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations,” NASA said in a Dec. 6 statement. After years of studying the issue, NASA decided to alter the trajectory of the Artemis 2 mission return to Earth, but to fly the existing heat shield on that Orion spacecraft.
“Future heat shields for Orion’s return from Artemis lunar landing missions are being produced to achieve uniformity and consistent permeability,” NASA said.
Where are we now?
As of Thursday, the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC, teams with Amentum, the company responsible for integrating the pieces of the SLS rocket and going through checkouts as part of the NASA’s Consolidated Operations, Management, Engineering & Test (COMET) contract, are continuing to stack the pieces of the solid rocket boosters that will attach to either side of the rocket’s core stage.
Brad McCain, the deputy program manager for Amentum, said during the Jan. 29 panel that the stacking should be complete “in the next two to three weeks.”
“Once the core stage is lifted out of High Bay 2 and into High Bay 3, we’ll put the LVSA (Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter), the Orion Stage Adapter, the ICPS (Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System), the Service Module, Orion capsule, put the Orion panels on, put the LAS on, the Launch Abort System, and do the final integrated test and check out,” McCain said. “We’ll roll out to the launch pad when we’re ready and we have planned tanking tests that will be performed and then we will launch.”
McCain said around mid-February, the ICPS will be moved from its storage site with manufacturer United Launch Alliance (ULA) to the Multi-Payload Processing Facility (MPPF). This 45-foot-tall (13.7 m) stage has a single RL10 engine from Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris company, that is fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Aerojet Rocketdyne is also responsible for the RS-25 engines that power the core stage.
Shireman said that Lockheed Martin expects to hand over the Orion spacecraft to Amentum in April to begin the integration process. He noted large portions of the Orion spacecraft that will fly on the Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 missions are inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkouts Facility at KSC.
“We actually have (Artemis) 5 and parts of 6 in manufacture at [the Michoud Assembly Facility] in New Orleans,” Shireman said. “We are processing and building multiple vehicles right now and some of the things that we’re focused on now is how do we accelerate the pace at which we can build and test this vehicle and get ready to fly. It really is a big focus for us.”
The path to the pad for Artemis II. 🚀
We turn over @NASA_Orion to ground systems for launch prep processing in just a few months. Until then, it’s 24/7 for the Orion team at @NASA_Kennedy! pic.twitter.com/1ZgTSz8OKc
— Lockheed Martin Space (@LMSpace) February 5, 2025
The timing of the wet dress rehearsal for the SLS rocket is still being determined. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the Artemis program Launch Director, said it will depend on how close they want to perform the WDR as compared to the launch date itself.
“I would say the fall timeframe, depending on the configuration that we choose to pursue,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “If you roll out, do a full integrated tanking test, roll back or if you do a tanking test more closer to launch, but I would say no earlier than that fall timeframe.”
The target of an Artemis 2 launch “no later than April 2026” will see some refinement in the near future. Ramsey said they are responding to NASA challenging those involved to get more specific and stick to a date.
“The agency has challenged us to do better and we’re in the process of trying to figure out what ‘better’ looks like,” Ramsey said. “I’d say in the next few weeks, we’ll have a ‘work to’ launch date that the whole team will get behind and start pedaling the bike fast to get to that point.”
As for risks of getting from where they are now to that soon-to-be-specified launch date, Ramsey said making a final decision to use the Orion heat shield as is was helpful to have in the rear view mirror.
“You know, just putting the rocket and the spacecraft together is risky. I mean, we’re gonna get through our testing, the normal, planned testing,” Ramsey said. “As far as other risks that are out there, we kind of work those every day. There’s Whack-a-Mole every day that we have to find problems, fix problems and move on to the next day.”
Beyond Artemis 2
Looking into the future of the Artemis program, starting with the Artemis 4 mission, NASA intends to use what it calls the Block 1B version of the SLS rocket. That taller version of the vehicle will rely on both a new Mobile Launcher as well as the readiness of a new upper stage system, which is Boeing’s Exploration Upper Stage (EUS).
John Shannon, the vice president of Boeing Exploration Systems, said the flight-worthy version of the EUS will be delivered to the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in late 2026 and be configured for a test campaign and hot fire either late that year or in early 2027.
“What you’ll see roll out first is the structural test article, which looks just like the EUS. We’ll take it to Marshall Space Flight Center and do all the mean things that we did to all the other elements and put it through its paces,” Shannon said. “And then, we’ll go to Stennis and do the Green Run.”
Shannon said unlike the Green Run test of the core stage used on the Artemis 1 mission, this go around they will “do a couple of firings on purpose this time and we’ll end up swapping out engines.”
“Those engines will not be vacuum-rated engines. They’ll be sea-level-rated engines,” Shannon explained. “We’ll swap out the engines and then send it off to the Cape for the Artemis 4 flight.”
Assuming a launch of the Artemis 2 mission in April 2026, it would be a roughly 14- to 16-month turnaround before the planned launch of Artemis 3 in mid-2027. Shireman said production on the heat shield blocks began in October 2024 and McCain said for its part, Amentum is working to establish the ability to move through a launch campaign as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“As far as a timeline, we would hope to do better than 14 months. To be quite honest, you really can’t use Artemis 1’s timeline as a baseline because of so many different things that we did and the unexpected damage and everything we fixed for Artemis 2. That delayed everything getting started,” McCain said. “If the hardware performs like it should, and we get what I would call the expected response from the infrastructure, then 14 months is sufficient time to turn around… I think the target is 12 to 13 months. Yeah, 12 months nominal.”
