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NASA's Jared Isaacman on moon base plans, Artemis III, more
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman speaks with CBS News' Mark Strassmann about the upcoming Artemis III mission, its complexity, NASA's plans for an eventual moon base and more.
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About Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman, who became NASA Administrator in late 2025, has been outlining the agency's plans for a sustained return to the Moon and eventual human missions to Mars. He stated that the Artemis program was restructured to add a 2027 orbital test mission (Artemis III) before a planned 2028 Moon landing (Artemis IV), a change he attributed to a mandate from President Trump and additional funding from the Working Family Tax Cut Act. Isaacman described the goal as building a "Moon base" through a phased approach, beginning with robotic landers and rovers to establish power, mobility, and communications infrastructure, and culminating in permanent habitation. He emphasized that the primary objective of the lunar base is to master the use of water ice and other resources, which he called a proving ground for future Mars missions. Isaacman has frequently framed the effort as a competition with China, stating that the U.S. must return to the Moon before its rival to avoid sending a message of weakness. He described SpaceX as "our greatest commercial space company" and expressed confidence in Starship, calling it a potential "light switch moment for humanity." He also announced the SR1 Freedom spacecraft, a nuclear-powered interplanetary vehicle scheduled for a 2028 launch, which he described as a "70% solution" to demonstrate nuclear propulsion for Mars travel. Isaacman has stressed that NASA is embedding its engineers across the supply chain to drive progress, and he has argued that a sustainable space economy requires private investment beyond taxpayer funding, citing orbital data centers and lunar resource extraction as examples.
Transcript (20 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
You made a decision back in February to change the focus of the mission. It was not going to be a moon landing. Instead, Artemis 3 is going to never leave Earth orbit. What is Artemis 3's role as a stepping stone to an eventual moon landing?
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Jared Isaacman0:15
Well, first I want to make sure we're giving good credit to the NASA team. We are surrounded by the best and brightest here across all these centers. They knew at the time that going from Artemis 2, which hadn't flown yet, and flying around the moon, and waiting three years to then launch that very big complicated rocket again to land on the moon was a bridge too far. So, they had been doing the analysis for a long time. What we needed was the mandate from President Trump. The national space policy said go back to the moon, do it before 2028, build the moon base, do the other things, and then we needed the resources. That $10 billion plus-up that came from the Working Family Tax Cut Act gave us the resources and the mandate, not to mention all the planning that had been going on here at NASA to do this mission the right way, which is fly around the moon on Artemis 2, excellent mission, gather lots of good data, launch again a year later, get into a rhythm, rebuild muscle memory around here, and then rendezvous the Orion spacecraft with both landers, because we need the contributions from both of them to complete this undertaking, but do so in Earth orbit where you're close to home. That's where you want to learn. That's why we did it that way in the 1960s with Apollo 9. And no doubt we will learn from there. There will be hardware changes and software updates and process improvements and set up for the landing in 2028 with Artemis 4. So, we made those decisions in February, but let's just say that we had all the right ingredients to do the right thing leading up to that moment.
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Interviewer1:44
Artemis 3 has been described as one of the most complex missions in maybe NASA history with multiple companies, multiple rockets, with any luck a couple of different landers. What is it to you that makes it especially complex?
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Jared Isaacman2:01
Well, I would say the fact that you are getting into a multi-launch campaign. That's kind of what's exciting here. When everyone tunes in for this mission to get underway, you are going to see the three most powerful rockets in the world come together to make this mission possible. And I think that's the right way to start thinking about what our future in space looks like. During the 1960s, the Apollo era, we had to bring everything along for the ride on a single rocket launch. We had to create at the time the most powerful rocket in the world. It had to carry the astronauts, had to carry the lunar lander. Eventually, it had to carry the rover. In a world today where we have the healthiest launch industry in the history of America's space program, you don't need to combine everything in one shot. So, we can send up our astronauts on SLS. We can send up landers with SpaceX. We can send up landers with Blue Origin. Heck, we got a half dozen other companies that are sending up landers to help us build the moon base. So, it's kind of the right approach to do it. I think it'll be great for those that are watching. You're going to see again three most powerful rockets in the world come underway. But most importantly, the lander. That is everything. We're going to be able to test out both in Earth orbit and gain confidence for where we go next in 2028, which is back to the surface of the moon.
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Interviewer3:13
All space is hard. Is a mission that complex a little daunting?
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Jared Isaacman3:18
Well, that's our specialty here at NASA. People say, 'Well, that sounds very ambitious.' Ambitious is what we do, but we bring it into reality. We do it in the right way. Again, you're applying the resources and the minds of the best and brightest from across the nation to be able to approach a mission like that the right way and make sure that it's successful. Today was an important milestone in that journey where you put four absolutely incredible astronauts, three that have flown to space before, very experienced, and one who is backing up the Artemis II crew over the last couple years. No doubt spent more time in the simulator and understands how Orion works than any of the others. Again, you're putting together all the right ingredients to ensure a successful outcome.
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Interviewer3:59
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have had issues with their rockets. Their landers are still in development. Are you confident that the hardware will be ready in time for this planned mission next year?
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Jared Isaacman4:13
Well, I am confident. I'm confident for a couple of reasons. First, when you see Blue Origin and SpaceX have their various setbacks, and that seems surprising, I would encourage folks to go on YouTube and start looking at some of the NASA-era rocket tests in the early 1960s, and they looked very similar. That is actually to fail fast and learn. To be hardware rich, be able to take the data and what you've learned and roll it into the next rocket. An iterative design approach is how you get to really challenging outcomes very quickly. And Blue Origin and SpaceX both subscribe to that. Now, we are not, as I've said many times, we are not going to sit on our hands and wait for them to figure it out because we've been there before. We have done this in decades past. So, we are embedding NASA subject matter expertise across the supply chain to help SpaceX, to help Blue Origin, to help Axiom with our spacesuits. We're going down to the subcontractor level. Amit Kshatriya, he was out and our associate administrator was out on the road with Jeremy who heads up our Artemis program, working through valve issues. This is what people should expect at NASA, to get out on the road, to drive outcomes, apply our expertise, and get us going in the right direction. We're doing that with our two lander providers. The setbacks should be expected in this environment just like they were in the 1960s. It's all going to converge in the next year for Artemis 3. We're going to take that. We'll go through another test campaign until Artemis 4 when astronauts are back on the moon.
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Interviewer5:40
You hope to have both for Artemis 3. You only need one for Artemis 4. So, what will determine which company you pick assuming that both can present a viable solution?
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Jared Isaacman5:53
Well, I certainly hope we're in that situation where we have both landers that are ready to go and we have high confidence in either one of them for Artemis 4 because what that tells me is we're just going to be pulling in the timelines for Artemis 5. And you're going to see astronauts walk on the moon and then they're going to come back home and not too long later you're going to see it again which again that mirrors a lot of what we saw in the 1960s. You want to get in a rhythm. You want good muscle memory. It does not work out well for everybody to be launching these kind of rockets to the moon in an extremely dangerous environment measured in years. You want to be able to do it in months. So I certainly hope they're both ready for it. I will tell you with Artemis 3 how important it is for Orion to rendezvous and dock with both. So I'd say it's extremely unlikely we would ever launch that mission unless both were ready so that we could achieve those important test objectives and bring down risk for Artemis 4 and they land on the moon. But if they're both ready for our 2028 timeline then that just tells me you're going to see an Artemis 4 and Artemis 5 moon landing pretty quick.
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Interviewer6:52
But what if only one is ready? How long are you willing to wait for the other?
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Jared Isaacman6:57
Well, I'd say that's why we're getting ahead of it right now. That's why you have dozens of NASA subject matter experts helping Blue Origin as they go through pad rebuild, the anomaly investigation, try and get them back in the business of launching the New Glenn rocket very quickly. But we have subject matter experts at Axiom right now helping them with the suits and the same with SpaceX and across the entire supply chain. We are not waiting to get to that point to say, well, only one lander is available. We're going to drive both to meet our timelines.
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Interviewer7:26
Shift gears for a second. You laid out plans for an ambitious moon base. Help us visualize what that's going to be. What will it look like? What will go on there? How long will people spend there?
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Jared Isaacman7:39
Sure. So when you think about the International Space Station right now, we've maintained this continuous human presence in microgravity for more than a quarter of a century. It's an absolute fantastic laboratory for science and research, tech demonstrations. We're going to test out the spacesuits that our astronauts on Artemis 4 will wear on the moon in lower orbit. But the next natural evolution from microgravity lower orbit is to go down to the surface of the moon. And that's where the astronauts will be able to interact with the lunar regolith. You could be 3D printing lunar regolith. You could be using our rovers, of which just a couple weeks ago we awarded two contracts. There'll be many more to do surface improvements, building landing pads, covering habitats to protect them from meteorites and radiation. But this is the opportunity for the astronauts to work with the water ice. That's why we're going to the South Pole, start mastering the skills of in-situ resource manufacturing for the next objective, which is when we send astronauts to Mars and we're able to bring them home safely. That's the importance of the moon base. Now, it is not going to come together in one magnificent glass dome. We're not doing the jump to the dream state anymore at NASA. We're again drawing on the playbook of the '60s. You're going to see lots of landers and rovers. Literally starting in early 2027 on the moon base website, you're going to see landers, rovers, lots of science missions going on the moon as we execute what we call the science or survival and learn what does and doesn't work in the South Pole of the moon to inform the next phase where we start having semi-permanent habitation on the moon.
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Interviewer9:11
As you well know, China intends to land on the moon by 2030. How much does China's timetable influence NASA's push to get there? Its timetable for all of this?
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Jared Isaacman9:25
Well, first and foremost, NASA has been there before. We won the space race in the 1960s. We'll certainly win it again. I think competition is a great thing. I say it all the time. This is why we're able to kind of get all of our resources concentrated in the right direction, which is a big thing that we're doing right now at NASA, concentrating our resources on the needle-moving objectives in line with President Trump's national space policy. I would say we are making a lot of progress because of that competitive drive. You certainly don't want to lose those. So, I'd say we are taking all the right steps in order to ensure that America can return to the moon, build the moon base, establish that enduring presence in advance of our geopolitical rival.
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Interviewer10:05
The big story this week is the IPO of SpaceX. What do you think about not only the company going public, but what does the IPO of SpaceX mean for the business of space?
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Jared Isaacman10:18
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I've been very passionate about the importance of having an orbital and perhaps even a lunar economy someday. Because I do think a lot of us who've grown up imagining what a spacefaring world might look like with lots of orbital space stations and moon base and Mars outpost, spaceships that can maybe someday take at least scientific payloads to another star system. I do not believe that can happen if it is entirely funded by taxpayers. Because rightfully, the debate always comes up, how can we invest so much in space when we have so many problems here on Earth? Now, the answer of course is we can do both, but when you have some of the most technologically advanced companies in the world putting their resources in well in excess of taxpayer dollars to create orbital data centers and AI data centers and mass drivers on the moon. That's the economy that we want in space that's going to ultimately result with more people living and working in space and maybe someday make us a multi-planetary species. So, in that respect, I appreciate all of our partners and vendors that put their own capital to work and their resources for this better, brighter future that really benefits all humankind. And I appreciate well-capitalized partners as well.
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Interviewer11:30
It's all part of living in the commercial era of space.
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Jared Isaacman11:33
Well, people throw that out a lot and I just again, I go back to the 1960s and like explain why that's different than when we partnered with Boeing or Northrop Grumman built the LEM. We had a lot of companies that helped us do the near impossible in the 1960s. Many of them are still helping us do it today and yes, of course, you have new companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin and Rocket Lab and they bring a kind of a different flair to it, but they're coming together to do the near impossible for the good of the nation, for the economic potential and scientific potential of space and again, honestly, for all humankind.