Ladies and gentlemen, guardians and airmen, welcome to the stage NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.
Good morning, everyone. We certainly have some good content to work with in our videos at NASA, no doubt. I can't tell you how grateful I am to serve under President Trump, with the bipartisan support of Congress, alongside the immense talent within our workforce, with the guardians out there watching over us, and with the mission objectives we have been entrusted to achieve.
On December 18th, 2025, President Trump signed his historic executive order on ensuring American space superiority, directing NASA to accelerate its return to the lunar surface, establish humanity's first outpost, its first enduring presence on another world, a moon base, finally get America underway on nuclear power in space, launch more missions of science and discovery, and inspire the world through the breakthrough headlines only NASA is capable of achieving.
In the months since we brought extreme focus to this national imperative, Artemis 2 was just the beginning. Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy rode 8.8 million pounds of thrust to near-Earth escape velocity. They traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history before, around the moon and back home safely on the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft, a test mission in every respect, and it was a success.
Now, just a few weeks ago, as you saw in the video, at Johnson Space Center, the President awarded all four astronauts the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for their service on this incredible mission. Because of their courage, and most importantly the contributions of tens of thousands across the NASA workforce, industry, and international partners, America is back in the business of sending astronauts to the lunar environment. And we are not slowing down.
Artemis 3 is being assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center as we speak, and the crew is in training. In 2027, you will witness the three most powerful rockets in the world. The crew will launch alongside the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket and SpaceX Starship as the Orion spacecraft rendezvous with our test landers to demonstrate interoperability, retire risk for 2028 when American astronauts make the grand return to the surface of the Moon.
Now, in parallel, we'll begin laying the foundation of the Moon base in early 2027 when, on a near-monthly cadence, uncrewed robotic landers will make their way to the lunar South Pole. Throughout phase one, we'll be testing surface power, crewed and autonomous mobility, PNT, early tests to support future habitation modules, and all the science and technology demonstrations the mass budget affords. This is the science of survival, and it has been a little over a half century, so we do want to get this right.
Because we are no longer designing programs that will be too big to fail, but really too costly to succeed. We are not spreading our resources thin trying to make everyone happy, which I think, as everyone knows, makes no one happy. We are not jumping right to the dream state, bypassing the playbook of success that achieved what many thought was impossible when the Eagle landed on July 20th, 1969.
We are standardizing our rocket. We are rebuilding muscle memory, clearing bureaucratic obstacles, and empowering our team to execute on the world-changing missions the taxpayers have entrusted us to achieve, and we have no intention of being late. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched ahead of schedule and under budget. We did have a little help from our friends at the NRO, and we launched from historic launch complex 39A, and she began her voyage to L2.
Now, when Roman opens her eyes nearly a million miles from home, in that instance, she will see more of the universe than anything we've ever put into space before. She will seek to understand the mysteries of dark energy, dark matter, and use the JPL-built coronagraph to discover tens of thousands of worlds hidden behind the glare of distant stars.
As we seek to answer the question, are we alone? And are we alone even in our own solar system, in our backyard? We will send Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered octocopter, to Saturn's moon of Titan in 2028. And Europa Clipper is already bound for Jupiter to study the complex chemistry on those distant moons.
In 2028, SR1 Freedom will launch the world's first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft to Mars and deliver the Skyfall payload of three Ingenuity-class helicopters to scout the Martian environment using ground-penetrating radar, looking for subsurface water ice and potentially future landing spots. Now, SR1 is just the beginning of what will become the nuclear NASA. There will be an SR2, an SR3 and 4 as we progressively build the capability to reach deeper into the solar system and commission a new fission-powered American star fleet.
Back in the atmosphere, we are rebuilding the X-plane portfolio. The X-59 has already quietly broken the sound barrier this past summer, but NASA is re-committing to flight test and will work alongside industry to begin flying higher and faster than we have in decades.
And whenever NASA sets out to do the near impossible, we never go at it alone. Our partners across the national security enterprise have always aided in these great American endeavors. The Space Force was there for Artemis 2. Guardians contributed to the safe ascent, tracked Orion through the cislunar corridor, and provided continuous spaceflight safety support. The United States Navy, and really contributions from all the services alongside the 45th Weather Squadron, supported launch and recovery operations.
The cooperation only becomes more important as activity moves farther away from Earth. As the Apollo 11 plaque says, at NASA we do come in peace for all mankind, but there are those that seek to challenge American supremacy in the high ground of space, to threaten the scientific, the economic and national security potential of this new frontier. And unlike the United States, they do not draw a distinction between their military and civil ambitions.
The Department of War and the Space Force secure and defend American interests in this vitally important domain, and we could not be more grateful. Grateful for all you have done and all that will be required ahead as we continue on in this greatest adventure of all. You are witnessing a very energized NASA, and we will need to be, as we are in the midst of a very real second space race.
China will accomplish what the Soviets never could. They have an achievable two-launch architecture to put their taikonauts on the moon. They have demonstrated reusability with their rockets. They have the expertise, and history has shown they could even be early and we could easily be late. They too seek to build a moon base alongside the Russians and put a nuclear reactor right in one of the limited parking spots on the lunar South Pole, and success in this endeavor will be measured in months, not years.
Our allies and adversaries are watching. So is every nation deciding whose technology to buy, whose standards to adopt, whose security relationships to deepen, and whose vision of the future to follow. And perhaps most importantly, our children will be watching, and the hopes and dreams of a generation inspired by these kind of Apollo 11-like moments is really on the line.
Fortunately, we have a president who understands that great nations remain great by continuously undertaking and achieving the kind of big, bold endeavors that define American exceptionalism. These are no longer just stories in history books. This is what you've been waiting for, and this is our time. This is the golden age. We are going back. We are going back to stay, to build the base. We are doing it together to show the world once again what America is capable of achieving and inspire the next generation to pick up the fire of exploration and carry it farther than we ever could.
And none of this will be accomplished by NASA alone. We have the support again of President Trump, Congress, a clear mandate in the national space policy, but it will take brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, our allies, our guardians from all services, and Americans across the country who still believe that great nations can do great things. Because our children will either inherit the confidence of a nation still capable of the extraordinary, or the memory of one that used to be. And that responsibility, that choice, belongs to all of us.
So, when the history books look back on this moment, let it record that America did not hesitate any longer. We did not allow bureaucracy or complacency, waste, inaction, or fear of failure to constrain what we could accomplish. We chose to go, and we went. Thank you.
Thank you, Administrator Isaacman. Now, please welcome General Kevin Chilton, three-time NASA astronaut and explorer, chair of the Mitchell Institute's Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence.
Wow, what a great time to be the NASA administrator.
I bet you're not getting much sleep.
No, we can do that in the years ahead. We have much to do in very little time to do it, in general.
Great. Well, thanks for joining us here today. This is so important for the Air and Space Force Association and the Institute to have you here. So, it's just terrific. So, let's talk a little bit about Artemis 2. I think, well, I know the whole world was watching once again. And just your feelings about the success of that mission and what it means.
Absolutely. And first, just to say, sir, it is an absolute honor to share the stage with you. You are absolutely one of my heroes. And I would say Artemis 2 was a great mission. It was a long time in the making, as you know. But in terms of all the things that we thought we could have been encountering on orbit, it went exceptionally well. SLS, I mean, was perfect on inserting Orion into its highly elliptical orbit. Orion performed extremely well. I mean, you know, I think that we had one of four water isolation valves fail, and then the toilet didn't work, which, as you know, sir, is pretty common across spacecraft.
But most importantly, look, it's rebuilding muscle memory. It's getting us back in the rhythm of sending astronauts to the moon. And we must. We've been making this promise to the American people for 36 years now. We spent over a hundred billion dollars in that effort. This is fulfilling a promise. This is going for the economic, the scientific potential, certainly the national security implications. But this will be our proving ground, sir, for where we master the skills for where we go next, which is Mars. And if we come up short in this after all those years, all those promises, all that taxpayer dollars spent, it says something is broken. So, I'm happy that Artemis 2 got off on the right start, but we cannot slow down. We got to launch again in 2027 and 28 until we put our astronauts back on the surface of the moon and then bring them home safely.
That's great. Well, to see it go so perfectly had to be a big boost to the engineers behind it, mission control, everybody. A first flight to go that well, it just kind of lifts the morale and inspires folks on the ground who were part of that mission.
Well, as I mentioned in my remarks here, this is a very energized NASA right now. And then again, President Trump coming to Johnson Space Center just a couple weeks ago, bestowing the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on those astronauts who did an absolutely fantastic job. They had three and a half years to prepare for it, but they did fantastic in that. And not only that, it was recognizing the contributions from tens of thousands across NASA and all our centers. It was a shot in the arm for the workforce, and we need it right now. I mean, every minute counts, and that's the attitude we're putting out across every one of the programs. Communicate daily. If we are losing hours, give us solutions to the problems. We cannot wait to solve an issue the next day that could be solved today, not in this space race, not with what's on the line.
And salute to our contractors and the international partners who are all part of this as well. Can you talk a little bit more about the importance of going to the South Pole on the moon?
So absolutely. So, you know, you look up at the moon, it's a big moon, surface area of Africa. The South Pole is more akin to Washington D.C. And there's only so many roads, so many good parking spots that you're going to want to occupy. Now, why go there? That is where the water ice is in the permanently shaded regions of the South Pole, which, by the way, is a far harsher environment than even operating on Mars. But the crater ridges can give you near continuous access to sunlight.
So it's very scarce, limited real estate that's going to give us the opportunity, three days from home, to test out our suits, which, by the way, has taken a long time to dial in, habitation, in-situ resource manufacturing. It's going to take an awful long time to get supply ships to Mars someday. So we want to make absolute use of this environment, three days from home, to get very good for where we go next. Now, along the way, there certainly could be economic potential. Maybe we have a lunar economy. Maybe we're mining and refining lunar regolith. I don't know. There's absolutely scientific potential. We'll put radio telescopes on the far side of the moon. There's certainly national security reasons to be operating in cislunar space, but we want to go there to master the skills for Mars. And when you realize there are only limited parking spots that get us access to that training environment, it creates an urgency. And we must, because the Chinese are going to the exact same locations. They are partnered with the Russians. They are going to put a nuclear reactor there, and they could potentially deny this training environment that is a necessity for America's space ambitions.
Yeah, it seems, as you point out, that being three days away matters when you've got to develop technologies thinking ahead to go to Mars that you want to be highly reliable. So it makes sense for that. And then, you know, when we discovered water ice on the moon, I thought, 'Why aren't we racing to get there? This is the key to...' I mean, water is really heavy to carry. And if you can find it where you're landing, it has so many uses.
Couldn't agree more, sir. We did take, you know, a brief half-century intermission in this whole going-to-the-moon thing, but we are back now. We do recognize the opportunity is there, and this will be the environment that takes us on the next stop on this great adventure, and that is Mars. Like, we have the mandate now. We have the national space policy. The president absolutely loves NASA. He called in to our post-launch press conference on Nancy Grace Roman, which again is an extraordinary telescope we launched. But I don't know if a president has ever called into a post-launch science press conference to congratulate the workforce on that. So we've got a very excited president, congressional support. We've got the best workforce, industry. We have good international partners. We can do this. We can go to the moon. We can build the base, and we can move on to the next stop, which is Mars. This is a really unique and exciting time at NASA.
It's great. And you've made some changes in the approach. Kind of an Apollo 9 revisit for the next flight of Artemis. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yes, sir. So, as you may know, the time between the Artemis 1 launch, which was the uncrewed launch, and the Artemis 2 mission around the moon, NASA flew every one of the Gemini missions, including the uncrewed ones, right? Like, that is not the proper cadence. You know, we talk about safety and are we pulling things in, launching every year? Throughout NASA's history, on average, we launched our designed spacecraft every three and a half months, and we were on a schedule to launch every three and a half years. You don't do anything well if you do it every three and a half years. Imagine what your golf game would look like if you played every three and a half years, right? And as a result, as we were getting ready for Artemis 2, we wound up relearning the same lessons from Artemis 1, and we had to push the vehicle back into the vehicle assembly building. We had hydrogen leaks, we had helium flow issues in the upper stage. You can't do that.
So, what have we done? We've stopped all these external impositions, trying to spread the NASA meatball everywhere, make everyone happy, spread our resources thin. No, we are getting back to doing what we are supposed to do on behalf of the American people, and frankly, the interested public all around the world. We're focused on our mission. If you're focused on the mission, you're launching a rocket that complicated as often as you possibly can, dialing in that muscle memory. So, yes, we are launching again in 2027. We standardized the rocket. I mean, we're not turning every one of these SLSs into a work of art, which was the previous plan. And it'll be an extraordinary mission, by the way. Three most powerful rockets in the world. I know I mentioned it in the remarks, but I mean, it's not only the right way to prepare for the lunar landing, but it's an indication of the future of what on-orbit assembly is going to look like in this new world that's coming together. So, it'll be a great show. We'll gain a lot of confidence. We'll learn a lot about the Orion spacecraft and the landers. We'll roll that into the uncrewed test landings that we'll do in early 2028 in advance of the actual crewed landings on Artemis 4.
Right. Well, I can attest to that. Not only do you not improve your golf game by playing once every three years, but it hasn't helped me to only play once a year. So, that's a great analogy. With regard to... we'll talk a little bit about China, if you don't mind. They seem to be the elephant in the room. A lot of your comments covered it. You know, it occurs to me that when you look at their behavior on planet Earth, in the South China Sea making illegal claims for that, the Senkaku Island claims, the Taiwan Straits, their illegal fishing crossing into exclusion zones of other countries. They seem to not want to play by the rules of the road that are laid here on Earth. Is there any reason we should suspect they would do the same on the lunar surface? It seems like you're certainly concerned about that.
Of course. I mean, the ultimate high ground absolutely matters, as everyone in this room can appreciate right now. I'll tell you. I mean, you know, China has had this plan dialed in for some time, and frankly, in a lot of ways, it's a more achievable plan. They have a two-launch architecture to put their taikonauts on the lunar surface. Best case for NASA is four launches to do the same. They have reusability built into their Long March 10 strategy. We do not in SLS. Now, we do benefit from an extraordinary commercial industry that's pioneering rapid reusability in heavy-lift launch vehicles. So, you know, we have options, thank goodness, but we were not on a path to win this space race up until rather recently.
Again, I'll tell you, I'm thankful for the reality that the Chinese have a plan to potentially, you know, to likely deny that critical area on the lunar South Pole, because it's given us the latitude to fix what is broken, to stop all the external impositions, the self-inflicted wounds that we had in our strategy, and bring extreme focus to the mission. So, to tell you, eight months ago, you know, a substantial portion of NASA's budget and resources were going into building a lunar space station to look down on what the Chinese were doing on the South Pole instead of building the infrastructure on the surface where the astronauts want to be, where the scientists want to be, where the technology and the development will actually be done. We had no lunar drones whatsoever at all. The Chinese, the Chang'e 7, that was scheduled to launch to one of the two most desirable parking spots in the South Pole, the Shackleton crater. Now, they ran into either some weather or mechanical-related issues. We're still trying to get our arms around that. I mean, that one lander had rovers, had drones on it. Now we have our Moonfall drones. Now we have a strategy to put lots of landers, lots of rovers, and actually build up to that enduring presence on the moon. But yeah, we were not focused until we had the president's space policy, and now we have the resources and the proper latitude to do what needs to be done, what we should always have been doing as a space agency. And I've no doubt the workforce, industry is going to respond extremely well and will deliver.
That's great. You know, I think during the Cold War, the race to the moon was certainly part of the war. It was a battle, and it was a battle of ideology. Like, whose team do you want to be on? The Soviet communist team or the free US team? And do you see that still today as something that would resonate with the American public? I mean, Americans supposedly are very competitive and want to come in first, and nobody remembers who came in second. Do you think there's a theme there too?
