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Artemis II ~ NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman ~ 2026-APR-07
Artemis II ~ NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman ~ 2026-APR-07
• Artemis II ~ NASA Administrator Jared Isaa...
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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Interviewer0:01
The Artemis 2 crew of astronauts has set the record for the farthest distance traveled by humans from Earth, breaking Apollo 13's record set in 1970. Joining us now on the historic moon flyby is NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. It's good to see you again, sir. Thank you for joining us.
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Jared Isaacman0:23
Good to see you as well, and thanks for having me on to talk about this great mission. When they spoke to the people actually involved who were going around the moon and asked about that 40-minute lack of communication, they said they didn't even think about it because they had so much confidence in what they were flying on and the integrity of that spacecraft. Were you not nervous either, I'll bet?
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Interviewer0:55
No. It's funny, we get that question quite a bit, and no, we weren't very nervous at all. In fact, it's quite common to have loss of communications with our astronaut missions, whether they're on the International Space Station. Certainly if you're going around the moon, you expect it. When they're in simulators, we'll fail out comms pretty routinely, and you'll notice the astronauts just stick with the work. So I would say that compared to a lot of the other things we were thinking about at that particular moment or throughout this mission, like the life support system on Orion, that's probably the most significant test. That's where our attention was, not necessarily the loss of comms. And I'm not surprised they thought it was rather peaceful for us to leave them alone for a little bit.
Right. You're not your father's administrator. I mean, you walked in space as a private citizen. So I guess you've experienced not doubt, but not fear. I don't know. You certainly have looked into the abyss and seen that maybe there's nothing there, but there is something there.
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Jared Isaacman2:09
I think scared to death. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, on my last mission just on the comms point, we had nearly a 24-hour comm outage, and like I said, the crew, it didn't even raise our blood pressure. We were very focused on the task in front of us, just as the crew on Artemis 2 were. And in terms of what's out there, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at your X feed this morning, but the White House just released an absolutely phenomenal Earthrise picture that this crew took yesterday and transmitted to us first thing this morning. And it is absolutely stunning.
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Interviewer2:46
It must be to be able to do that, and they must feel so far away from Earth, and yet they're on their way back at this point. Can you tell us in terms of the objectives you were looking for in terms of science and testing out systems for a future landing on the moon? What did we find out yesterday?
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Jared Isaacman3:13
Well, I would say so far, and again, this is really from the moment they arrived in Earth orbit, our interest was predominantly with the ECLSS system, the life support system on the Orion spacecraft. This is the first time astronauts have ever been on the spacecraft. This was the first time astronauts have ever been on the actual rocket itself that put them into space. And this is incredibly important. It is extremely hard to keep human beings alive in the harsh environment of space. You've got radiation out there, you've got micrometeors and orbital debris. There's a lot that goes into that. We certainly learned that we've got some plumbing issues we need to work out on the spacecraft, but I'll tell you, the Orion is performing exceptionally well. That was probably the most important objective to move on to Artemis 3 in 2027, where we're going to take the same spacecraft Orion and rendezvous and dock it with the actual landers in Earth orbit, test the integrated operations. We'll learn from that just as we are from this mission for Artemis 4, when the landers will take the astronauts to the surface of the moon. So ECLSS systems life support on Orion is probably one of the most important things we wanted to get out of this mission, and it's performing very well.
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Interviewer4:24
So the landers will be in orbit when it goes up, and they'll be docking, and then a thrust to the moon, and then the landers go down, sort of similar to the LEM lunar landing module we had back in Apollo.
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Jared Isaacman4:43
Yeah, absolutely. So right now, think of this mission Artemis 2 as essentially a combination of Apollo 7 and 8 coming together. Artemis 3 in 2027 will be very much like Apollo 9. We're going back to the playbook that worked for us on July 20th, 1969. We're bringing it back. We're launching missions with greater frequency. Artemis 3 in 2027 again will be very Apollo 9-like, where we're going to test the lander and Orion in Earth orbit, so that if there's anything we don't like, you're very close to come back home. And then in 2028, you'll have essentially what will be the Apollo 11 mission, which will be Artemis 4, where Orion spacecraft and the lander will be together in lunar orbit. The lander will take two astronauts down to the surface of the moon. They'll conduct their operations, they'll come back, rendezvous again with Orion.
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Interviewer5:38
Jared, since we were further than we've ever been before, I guess that when we went around the moon earlier, we must have been closer. We were closer than 4,000 miles the last time. Did we find that? Do we know anything new about the dark side of the moon or about the moon itself? What have we learned in the last couple of days?
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Jared Isaacman6:00
Well, I would say the astronauts have done a fantastic job on Artemis 2 of observations, and they've been reporting that back. They have a pretty sophisticated tool that our science team has developed to look with various lenses at specific parts of the moon, some parts that have never had human eyes on them at all, and relay it back. I'll tell you, last evening, they all got our attention when they said they observed about four meteorite strikes on the far side of the moon. So my first reaction is, okay, we're building a moon base, we're going to have to think about our roofing here a little bit. But that was a special observation.
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Interviewer6:40
Wow. Still no cheese, I'm told.
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Jared Isaacman6:44
No, no cheese. No pyramids back there. We're learning a lot. They actually described the far versus the near side in great detail during the webcast last night, but yeah, no cheese or pyramids yet.
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Interviewer6:58
Administrator, I've seen pictures online that are beautiful, but with so much AI and fakery online, I just wonder, are they real? Did it really look orange and purple and blue all at the same time?
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Jared Isaacman7:13
I just looked at the pictures about five minutes before getting on this interview right now, and I would just say they looked absolutely stunning. They mentioned this last night during the webcast that they don't know if human eyes are ready to see what they've captured. And I completely paused when I saw it. But this is not AI. This is why we do what we do. This is why we send astronauts farther into space than ever before. It's why we bring them back home and learn and do it again and again as we continue what I think is the greatest adventure in human history.
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Interviewer7:48
And it's possible from nothing has changed in terms of where we will be landing. It's a much more difficult terrain, isn't it? But we want to go to the south pole of the moon. Any chance you think there still might be water there, Jared?
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Jared Isaacman8:08
100%. That's exactly why we are targeting the south pole of the moon. This is why we're going to build our base there. So we're talking astronauts on Artemis 4 landing on the south pole of the moon. But I'm telling you, in a matter of months, by the beginning of 2027, we're going to start landing uncrewed robotic missions on a near monthly cadence on the south pole of the moon and actually start building the moon base. You're going to have landers and rovers going around testing mobility, power, surface improvements. We may have our version of a mini bulldozer there to start creating landing pads for the landers. But we want to be there because of the water ice. You have ridges that give you near eternal light, so you have solar power, but the water ice we can interact with. We can make propellant, and we have to master those skills someday if we're going to go to Mars.
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Interviewer8:58
Administrator, thank you very much. And we want to keep doing this this year, next year, and beyond. I want to hear more about the meteor...
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Jared Isaacman9:08
To infinity and beyond. Yeah.
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Interviewer9:11
Yes, sir. Thank you. We'll be right back.