NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman Gives Update On Moon Base Plans | NASA LIVE

Is there anything you'd like to add?

So, now that we've recapped all of that, let's shift to our four new vendor contracts being awarded to industry providers today. Jared, do you want to go ahead and share who's going to be delivering NASA science payloads and tech demos?

It's been awesome to see them grow, just like other parts of the industry that we're going to need for the moon base. With Astrobotic, like the administrator said, it's another version of their Peregrine lander. They're getting two awards, and we have been ensuring that they have the production capacity for that, at the same time as they're building out finishing their Griffin one lander. So they're applying a lot of the lessons learned from the previous Peregrine buildout, and we expect to see a spacecraft that has those additional capabilities. Then Firefly, of course, we were all captivated by the footage of the Blue Ghost approaching the moon and landing on the moon. That was an epic mission. We got a ton of data from that. So we are thrilled to see them develop another instance of that Blue Ghost lander and see it carry some of our payloads to the moon. And then, of course, Intuitive Machines. I have seen already one version of the Nova C. I'm very excited to get another one. Again, we will apply all the lessons learned. As a matter of fact, they're doing quite a bit of work in the instruments for descent and guidance and navigation. They're going to apply all of the stuff they learned from the testing they do on Earth, as well as the next mission, into this instance. And very excited that we're going to get a bunch of new payload capacity to the surface.

Speaking of payload capacity, what do you think the chances are here if America wins at all that we can find some volume here on one of these landers to put one of the soccer balls in?

You're going to find a way.

So, a little bit of motivation for the United States here on this one. We're going to one up Alan Shepard and the golf game on the lunar surface, and we are going to get the soccer ball there. I don't know which lander it'll wind up going, and I'll leave that to you guys to handle the payload in.

Carlos, you've been deeply involved in shaping the near-term road map for our Moonbase construction zone. What's on the horizon for the Moonbase program?

So, great question. So, besides getting new awards for the landers, we're working across NASA. This is a one NASA effort, we're working with our science partners on making sure that we understand what the objectives for science are, picking some of the instruments and developing those with them, and also working with the research and technology team. They just announced in the press release yesterday, they're putting a broad area announcement for some of the early technology that we know we have gaps on, and it's there for folks to apply and put their ideas in SAM.gov right now. Those again will be early technology development projects that all feed into potential flight projects for things that we do in phase one and phase two in the future. So that's number one. We're then of course going into some of the moon base core activities. We announced Eclipse 2.0. That's another version of landers and also other options that we have to be able to procure not just as commercial service but only specifically landers. We want to get into the business where we have launch vehicles, different kinds of landers, and we're developing payloads for them. And we will be assembling these missions depending on what's ready. Those awards, the due date for that was actually today, and we'll be making those awards in early September or so. Then when we talk about the things that we have in procurement, definitely launch vehicles for the landers, the landers themselves, and in phase one technology demonstrations. So we're going to open up a new solicitation avenue for those technology demonstrations, and we're going to start focusing on surface power, but there's more. There's early habitation, there's surface mobility. So in a month or two, we're going to put that broad area announcement core for moon base out and we'll be soliciting for ideas and proposals on again start with surface power right away in July and then expanding that to other areas. And then because we're procuring those technology demonstration payloads, we need more landers. So we already have booked the ones that are the three that I talked about at the beginning. We just awarded four today. We can't wait to put great payloads on those and also learn things about getting back to the moon core objective for phase one. But then we're going to get in the business of deploying these technology demonstration payloads. Maybe a solar tower, maybe an inflatable habitation, things like that that we get through the broad area announcement. So more landers on the horizon for power, avionics, and habitation. So anyway, that kind of wraps up what's in the core, but...

That would be an awesome capability.

Well, there's no shortage of great things to talk about. And for everyone watching today, all of this information can be found by visiting our Moonbase website at www.nasa.gov/moonbase. Um, we have about 15 minutes for media Q&A. So we will go ahead and open that up and get started with Eric Berger from Ars Technica. Eric said, 'Carlos mentioned other options for Endurance's LV if it doesn't meet our timeline. What's NASA's timeline for the launch?'

I will start with what we're doing in Mumbai specifically and I'll let the administrator address the broader question. So when we're looking at options, you know, first of all having for moon base having multiple lander opportunities for the payloads is critical because we got to keep learning no matter what anomalies we have or bumps in the road. We've been focused on helping Blue Origin with the determination of the root cause. We will help with building the infrastructure. But then we're also looking at options like can we fly Mark 1 lander which it's intact and did not was not associated with the anomaly. Can we fly that in a different rocket or then we will look at other options for the payloads and looking at depending on with the timeline of the rocket getting back.

Jeff Foust of Space News says, 'What is the value of the lunar lander awards made today?'

So, phase one getting reliably to the surface. This is core part of that. We need to test many times in different places to be able to say that we've got that down because we're going to be putting very high value assets on those landers. So getting the count up and learning every time we put a lander down is very important.

Was she talking dollar value?

I was going to say I think it's monetary value. Okay. So I got that here. So for example, one award is around $144 million. So we're giving that to Firefly and Intuitive Machines, and it's in the order of 280 something million dollars for the Astrobotic landers. So,

And we will have a news release posted shortly with all of the details on our NASA website as well. Um, Marcia Smith of Space Policy Online asked, 'What exactly is NASA doing to ensure Astrobotic has the production capacity for two landers? Are both launching in 2027?'

Yeah. So we have been having those discussions specifically. We've inspected their facilities. It was amazing to see that after the demand signal we put out on ignition day, many vendors including Astrobotic immediately turned into action, started evaluating their production capacity. They do have the production capacity to complete Griffin one and go into production of two landers, as a matter of fact more than that, and they're actively working on expanding even beyond that for the next set of landers that are coming up which we talked about today for technology demonstration payloads. And they're not the only ones. I think every one of the vendors we announced today and everybody else that's in the CLPS 1.0 pool is building up that capability. So we feel pretty confident on the awards today and the ones that are coming up and...

Anthony Leon of Spectrum News asks, 'For the Moonbase 2 mission, just how instrumental will the Flex rover be? Not just for that mission, but for the future ones?'

Actually, it has components that they plan to use on the lunar terrain vehicle that we awarded earlier in the year. So from an engineering perspective, we're going to test out quite a bit of things on that rover that play forward into other assets that we already have in the works. Also, we're going to put instruments there. And just like Flex, many other ones will be the same way. We're going to put standard instruments that will give us basic information about the surface, the terrain, the environment, the temperature, the illumination that we're getting there, which is all part of getting the ground truth, objective number two of phase one. So very valuable. And you know, in that version of a rover, smaller ones, bigger ones that will come later, we're going to be getting tons of data from the South Pole, which again we know very little about right now.

Christopher Mick from the Hudson Star Observer asks, 'With the ever-increasing cadence of robotic lander missions called for in the moon base phases, what are the plans for landing plume mitigation that could damage pre-placed assets?'

Good question. In the first set of landers like the ones we announced today, we're actually going to have stereo cameras that will be looking at that plume surface interaction for us to better understand what's happening when different types of engines, because this is a different set of landers, what is happening and can we characterize and model that very accurately? And then in the future, part of the technology demonstration initiatives have to do with surface preparation. So today if we did nothing, we think we would have to put the landing sites like a mile and a half away from anything meaningful that you don't want impacted. But we don't want to just settle on that. We may start there. We envision potentially building berms that can surround these areas, also nuclear reactor to protect the crews and the equipment from radiation. But all of this is just a vision. We got to try that out. That's why early on we'll be putting rovers and potentially lunar terrain vehicles that will help us try out surface preparation stuff. Even if it's just moving some rocks or trying to build a mini berm, all of that plays forward into really building the assets that in phase two will help do the job.

Paul Brinkman of Aerospace America says, 'Is there any hardware built for a promise rover? And what would that be? Was that just a potential name for a future mission?'

We have been witnesses to it, tried to drive it ourselves but the experts took it over, but yeah it's there and it's been tested extensively in the JPL Mars rockyard.

Fox News's Jonathan Siri asks, 'Carlos, could you elaborate on what remains unknown about the conditions at the lunar south pole?'

A lot. For example, we have a definition up to like a meter of height of the lunar surface. We would like to have definition in centimeters of height and even subterrain just to see what kind of surface strength we have and what's there that we may be able to explore and use in situ on the surface of the moon. Then we know that in the south pole, the illumination conditions are complex because the sun really only rises one or two degrees. So one of the ways that we think we can mitigate that is building solar masts, but we don't know at what height it's truly effective. Is it 1 meter? Is it 2 meters? We need to put stuff there and try that out. And then the reason why surviving the lunar night is hard is because it gets really cold. I mean you go from being super hot, maybe 200-250 degrees, to minus 200 once the shade hits you. And then if you go into some of these permanent shadow regions, it can be like minus 400. I mean that for any system, any kind of electronics structure, anything to survive that is pretty staggering. But that's what we think it is. We need to put stuff there and really maybe the temperature is not that cold because there's some albedo or something that reflects on it. So all of those things we really want to try out. Then in Artemis 2, the crew reported flashes of micrometeorites hitting the surface. We want to put stuff there and see if that's really a problem or it's not. And I can go on and on. You know, how do we drive on the surface of Mars? How easy is it to move a rock or to clear a terrain or to build a berm? We have ideas. We've tried it out on Earth. We're doing everything we can here to try it out. But as we know, once you get to space, especially the moon and especially in the South Pole, it's a different ballgame. So that's why our studies are really about putting stuff on the surface and trying stuff out as soon as we can.

Irene Clots of Aviation Week asks, 'What is driving the driving decision about whether to fly Mars rover engineering unit to the moon? When would that happen? How does that compare with the commercial landers already in development?'

Will Robinson Smith of Spaceflight Now says, 'Does NASA intend to procure landing services using Intuitive Machines's Nova D lander? If so, why not for this 2028 mission?'

Sure, we are excited about the development of the Nova D, just like other vendors are developing a scaled up version of their landers. We may be procuring that. I mean, we just announced that the Eclipse 2.0 window is closing today. So it could be a CLIPS 2.0 award in the future. So yeah, if we're going to use all the capability, there's some low class like 150-200 kilograms landers today. There's also 500 kilogram, there's two or three metric tons, and we want to go up to like 15 metric tons. So this is going to be an evolution of the landing capability that we have up to when we get to the human class cargo landers which could be up to Starship around the 100 metric ton capability. Yeah, we plan to use whatever is available and we have the contract mechanisms for.

Manuel Mazanti has asked, 'Moon Base 1 after the New Glenn incident, how has NASA or sorry, has NASA been in talks with Blue Origin to use another vehicle to launch MK1 or are we okay to wait to the end of the year?'

So as the administrator said earlier, plan A still very much is to be able to fly Mark 1 on the New Glenn, and we're monitoring the timeline and the progress there. It would not be an impact to the moon base development if we even went into 2027, you know maybe the middle of 2027 for that. So after that, as we see the progress, like we stated before, we'll be evaluating options, including the possibility that we can launch on a different launch vehicle, but as the administrator said, we're sticking to plan A for now.

David Curley of Full Throttle said, 'Isaacman gave high praise for Blue and Limp. Is your confidence based on data about the anomaly as well as the behavior of Blue?'

Andrea Linfelder of the Houston Chronicle asks how is Promise different from Viper?

Good question. So Viper is there to look for volatiles. The core science objective is getting to the south pole of the moon, looking for those volatiles that potentially have been there thousands of years. We want to get to them, but Viper uses solar power, so we're constrained to the terrain that we put it on, how much illumination it's going to get, the time of year, where it can go. It could certainly not potentially go into some of these permanently shadowed regions and stay deep in there, and then based on the lunar nights, it will have a lifespan that's limited by that. Of course we will work with our science community partners and the science mission directorate to select similar payloads, because with Promise, we could potentially not be constrained by solar power. For example, Curiosity and Perseverance have been on Mars for years, I think 15 and 6 years or something like that. So if we have a capability like that, we could choose to really embark on long traverses and hit several of these areas where there are permanently shadowed areas, and who knows what other payloads we can put in there depending on the payload capacity. Yeah, I think that's to be very clear, these are two very different category of vehicles right now, one being nuclear-powered. It has an RTG on it. This is how it survives for an extremely long time in a very challenging environment on the surface of Mars, equally so on the south pole of the moon. So it gives us a lot of options to be working in those permanently shaded regions a lot longer than Viper would survive. So great capability, something the taxpayers already invested into. We outfit it a little bit differently, put some different instruments on it, and it's going to be a highly capable vehicle for the South Pole Moon, and we can get it there fast versus any kind of new project. So something we're pretty excited about. Promise.

And we have time for just a few more questions. Ryan Kaitton of nasapasflight.com asked, 'Why is there only one EVA suit provider when there are two lander providers? Is NASA actively seeking another suit provider?'

Marcia Dunn of the AP asks, 'As NASA moves from Flags and Footprints exploration toward a sustained moon base, what specific human systems lessons such as crew autonomy, habitability, governance, or psychological resilience do you think must be proven on the moon before NASA can responsibly send crews to Mars?'

And before we get to our next couple of questions, I do want to acknowledge this special visitor that came to us here at NASA HQ, soon to be on the moon. That's it. That's the challenge. Okay. So, Team USA, get the job done. And we've already sent it to the International Space Station. The next one is you have to find a way to get this on a lander.

Uh Joey Roulette from Reuters asks, 'What is the promised lander? Which NASA center does it come from and why haven't we heard about it before?'

And last question here, Ken Chang with the New York Times said, 'I believe Jared said the robotic landings would begin in 2027. Our moon base 1, 2, and three now all delayed to 2027.'

Now, we expect to have at least one mission in 26 with Astrobotic, but you know, things happen and we'll keep monitoring. I described the hardware earlier. It's looking great. The landers are looking great. So we have some confidence that we're going to make it in 26. And if not, it will be very early in 27.

Well, it sounds like there's a lot to look forward to and a lot to be excited about. Before we close this up, I want to ask if either of y'all have any closing thoughts that you want to share with our audience today.

I guess I'll start with I mentioned all the great hardware that is being developed at every NASA center. It's invested in this from science to technology to facilities that we're now consolidating and investing on to be able to meet the demand and help the whole enterprise of getting to the moon and industry, and in the future who knows, we may be adding contributions from international partners. I feel like we're on the cusp of doing something great and we're starting to see some progress on it. So super excited about it.

So, to wrap this up, if you go to nasa.gov/moonbase, you can find all of our content there. Obviously, there are plenty of exciting things to tune in and look at. So please stay with us and keep on watching as our content develops.

Thank you.

People are looking up again, believing in big things again. America is returning to the moon to build a moon base.