Ignition: NASA's Plan for The Moon

[music] [music] >> Hey folks, if you didn't hear the announcement earlier, we're going to start in a couple NASA has achieved the near impossible. We set foot on the moon, landed rovers on Mars, launched [music] telescopes to unlock the secrets of the universe, and began decades of continuous human [music] presence on the International Space Station, and delivered countless scientific discoveries along the way. But moments like those aren't accidents. They happen when we [music] bring the best and brightest from across the nation, the capabilities from industry and our partners from all over the world, and choose [music] to undertake and achieve the near impossible. And that's exactly what this moment demands of us once again. President Donald [music] Trump's national space policy has given NASA a mandate and the resources to return to the moon, build the base, take the next giant [music] leap, and expand American superiority in the ultimate high ground of space. And now it's upon us to execute, and to do so with the competence, the ownership, and the urgency of the world's most accomplished space agency. On March 24th, we're bringing together NASA leaders, our commercial partners, international allies, members of Congress, [music] and the administration for an event we're calling ignition. The future of American leadership in space can only be achieved with alignment across government, industry, our more than 60 Artemis Accords [music] partners, and the greater space-loving community. Ignition is about more than setting direction. It's about undertaking grand, [music] world-changing endeavors, and actually achieving them. This is the moment we reject the status quo, challenge what is broken, embrace what worked on July 20th, [music] 1969, and reject what stands in the way of extraordinary outcomes. NASA is leading the greatest adventure in human history, and it's only just begun. It's time to start believing again. Please welcome to the stage NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. >> [applause] >> Good morning, everyone. So, we are calling today's event ignition because it represents the start of a transformative journey for NASA. >> [snorts] >> I'd like to begin by thanking the leadership of President Trump for providing NASA the tools and policy to execute on our world-changing mission. I also wish to acknowledge the coalition assembled here today. We have a bipartisan mix of members of Congress and staff from authorization and appropriation committees who have provided the direction and the resources. We have 35 international partner nations here, including ambassadors, ministers, and leaders of several space agencies, who have worked alongside the United States in space for decades, and will continue to do so on the journey ahead. And we have leaders from the most capable space industry in the world. >> [snorts] >> NASA never undertakes these grand endeavors alone. The presence of all of you here today sends a very powerful message about what we intend to accomplish together. Now, in the few short months since I began this role, we have moved very quickly. We have taken action to cut bureaucracy with dozens of regulatory changes underway, and more than 370 sections identified for deregulation. I've also issued numerous directives with dozens more in progress, all focused on removing friction and empowering the workforce, and accelerating logical execution. That urgency reflects the moment we are in. It reflects the reality of a very great power competition, the importance of our mission, and the expectations rightfully placed on this agency by the American people, and the consequences if we fail to deliver. Taxpayers support NASA because we can change the world in air and space and science, and inspire the next generation along the way. But we cannot be spread thin trying to undertake dozens of externally imposed and self-inflicted distractions, jumping straight to the dream state at the expense of an achievable strategy. For too long, we tried to satisfy every stakeholder. The results of that approach are are very well documented in OIG reports. Billions wasted, years lost, non-conforming hardware delivered, programs that never launched, fewer flagship science missions, virtually no X planes, less astronauts in space, which means less kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween. I don't like it. The president doesn't like it, and the American people have waited long enough for the headlines only NASA is capable of making. For decades after the last space race, NASA was really the only game in town. For better or worse, the plan changed, we formed partnerships, spread goodwill, and tried to undertake programs that attempted really to make everyone happy. The outcomes became less important, skills atrophied, and now we find ourselves with a real geopolitical rival challenging American leadership in the high ground of space. NASA has stated we will return Americans to the moon before the end of President Trump's term. Our great competitor said before 2030. The difference between success and failure will be measured in months, not years. They may be early, and recent history suggests we might be late. This is why it is imperative we leave an event like ignition with complete alignment on the national imperative that is our collective mission. Over the past few months, I visited all the NASA centers and I've made a promise. If we concentrate NASA's extraordinary resources on the most important goals on the President's national space policy, clear away needless bureaucracy and obstacles that impede progress, and empower the workforce and partners, then returning to the moon and building a moon base will seem pale in comparison of what we're capable of accomplishing in the years ahead. This is a step in that direction, and you will hear updates on NASA's strategy across a number of important initiatives today. But to be clear, we are long past the time for words and PowerPoint. Alongside this event today, the RFIs and solicitations will go out, breakout sessions will begin, and as this spacefaring ship set sail, the focus moves quickly to execution. Let's start with the most visible objective before us, returning American astronauts to the moon. >> [snorts] >> Artemis 2 in the days ahead will send NASA and a CSA astronaut into the lunar environment, the first crude step of the Artemis program to pick up where Gene, Harrison, and Ronald left off on Apollo 17. At the same time, we are standardizing the SLS architecture with the Centaur 5 upper stage, we're rebuilding and focusing expertise on ML-1 pad turnaround, and establishing the muscle memory required to support a higher launch cadence. The programs we left behind in this effort were not success stories. NASA takes ownership for the shortcomings, but contributing billions more and time that we do not have was not a pathway to success. On that note, I welcome the interest from industry to make use of these capabilities in furtherance of our shared priorities. As we move forward, we intend to launch Artemis 3 in 2027 to test the integrated operations of Orion and one or both lunar landers in Earth orbit. What we learn from that mission will ideally give us the confidence to begin lunar landing attempts starting with Artemis 4 in 2028. I'm pleased with the proposals from both SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate progress on their landers. As I've told both of our valued partners, alongside Axiom on the EVA suit development, NASA's here to help, to provide expertise, to clear obstacles, to challenge requirements where appropriate, and do all we can to enable our partners to be successful. Should we fail, and should we look on as our rivals achieve their lunar goals ahead of our own, we are not going to celebrate our adherence to excess requirements, policy, or bureaucratic process. This revised step-by-step approach to learn, to build muscle memory, to bring down risk, and gain confidence is exactly how NASA achieved the near impossible in the 1960s. But this time, the goal is not flags and footprints. This time, the goal is to stay. Today we are providing a demand signal for frequent crude missions well beyond Artemis 5. We intend to work with no fewer than two launch providers with the aim of crude landings every 6 months with additional opportunities for new entrants in the years ahead. America will never again give up the moon. >> [snorts] >> That brings us to the next step, building the moon base. It should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface. Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives. It's worth pointing out that shifting NASA workforce priority to the surface, which has lots of advantages for safety, tech demonstration, and science, it's really the proving ground for future Mars initiatives, does not preclude revisiting the orbital outpost in the future. We will build the moon base in phase in three phases. Phase one endeavors to support industry by moving from infrequent bespoke efforts to a templated approach that will generate significant learning through experimentation. We will dramatically expand lunar landings through the CLPS and the LTV program, delivering rovers, instruments, and technology payloads that test mobility, power systems such as working with international partners and industry on the production of ROVs and RTGs, communications, navigation, surface operations, and all the science payload that can be incorporated. Phase two transitions from experimentation to semi-habitable infrastructure and routine logistics with the aim of supporting regular astronaut operations on the surface. It's at this point we anticipate seeing the significant contributions from our great partners, like JAXA's pressurized rover. Phase three takes advantage of the affordable mass to surface capabilities that cargo HLS will inevitably provide in the years ahead, and enables the permanent infrastructure necessary to sustain a human presence, such as Italy's proposed habitation module. The moon base will not appear overnight. We will invest approximately $20 billion over the next 7 years and build it through dozens of missions, working together with commercial and international partners towards a deliberate and achievable plan. Just as there was Mercury and Gemini before Apollo, there will be an evolutionary path to building humanity's first permanent surface outpost beyond Earth, and we will take the world along with us as they follow along on the NASA moon base website and watch the assembly through lunar relay and observation satellites. At the same time, NASA will never give up its presence in lower Earth orbit. The International Space Station has served humanity well, but it will not operate forever. The transition to commercial stations must be thoughtful and set up industry for success. Today we will review a bit of the history of the International Space Station, NASA's understanding of the commercial market, the budget available to support the enormous undertaking, and the two potential options available to explore going forward. Now, regardless of the pathway, NASA will invest the limited budget available over the years to work with commercial providers to build the future LEO presence, which includes maturing capabilities, expanding commercial opportunities through the PAM program, while creating what we hope is an achievable glide path to commercially operated space stations. We will further signal demand for what we hope will be multiple crew and cargo transportation providers to support LEO requirements for decades into the future. Now, NASA cannot force an orbital economy to exist, but we will certainly do all we can to ignite one. Science and discovery remains at the heart of NASA's mission. Today we'll provide updates on exciting flagship efforts like Roman and Dragonfly, alongside new initiatives like DAVINCI, bonus scientific payloads on the Mars telecommunications network, and rideshares designed to expand the pace of discovery. Public-private partnerships will turn NASA into a force multiplier for science. We are willing to challenge our approach to Earth observation and space space weather, work with constellation providers, find efficiencies with legacy missions still yielding great science, and invest in flagship undertakings only NASA is equipped to pursue. We are excited to hear about the role of philanthropic efforts that will play in increasing increasing our understanding of the universe, so like the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory systems. We welcome many such efforts and look forward to collaborating with and supporting them. The moon base itself and all the components that go into its assembly will become an extraordinary platform for scientific discovery. And there is one more thing. After decades of study and billions spent on concepts that have never left Earth, America will finally get underway on nuclear power in space. We will launch the first of its kind interplanetary mission named SR-1 Freedom before the end of 2028, demonstrate fusion power and the extraordinary capabilities to move mass efficiently in space. When Freedom reaches Mars, a year after launch, it will release the Skyfall payload of Ingenuity class copters to continue to explore the red planet. This pathfinder effort will open opportunities for commercial fusion power providers, be that propulsion, surface applications, and ultimately unlock the capabilities necessary for sustained exploration beyond the moon and missions to Mars and the outer solar system. Now, none of these efforts succeed without a very talented and capable NASA workforce. We are rebuilding NASA's core competencies. We are converting thousands of contractor positions to civil service, and restoring the engineering, technical, and operational strengths expected of the world's most accomplished space agency. We are expanding opportunities for interns and early career professionals. In partnership with OPM and NASA Force, we are creating pathways for experienced talent from industry to serve at NASA through term-based appointments, and we are seeking to open opportunities for NASA employees to gain experience in the aerospace industry that is leading the world. Undertaking the near impossible should be extraordinarily difficult. It will require require competence, ownership, dedication, and a great sense of urgency. We will recognize and reward only the hardworking contributors who delivered the intended outcomes. On that point specifically, we do not expect our partners to do this alone. We will embed NASA subject matter experts across the supply chain, attached to every vendor, subcontractor, and every part on the critical path from Artemis acceleration to building the moon base. We will challenge the status quo where appropriate and help solve problems and pull in production. But to be very clear, we are not going to sit idly by when schedules slip or budgets are exceeded, expect uncomfortable action if that is what it takes because the public has invested over a hundred billion dollars and has been very patient with respect to America's return to the moon. Expectations are rightfully very high. The taxpayers and their representatives in Congress should demand accountability from every vendor, every leader, every CEO if those expectations are not met. I know you all understand the message that's being delivered and please know that I will be in the field alongside all of you doing everything we can to ensure the correct outcomes are achieved. Looking ahead, there is no shortage of exciting rocket launches, but we will also inspire the next generation through outreach, education, grants, and programs that bring the public closer to the work we do here at NASA. Expect to see NASA aircraft at air shows and public events as we celebrate America's 250th birthday. All with the aim of inspiring the next generation to grow up and take humankind even farther. Today is called ignition for a reason. This is the moment where we should all start believing again, when ideas become missions, and when hard work delivers world-changing accomplishments. NASA once changed everything, and we're going to do it again. The greatest days of science and discovery are ahead of us, and I welcome your support and commitments as we continue the greatest adventure in human history. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Please welcome to the stage acting administrator of the exploration systems development mission directorate, Dr. Laurie Glaze. Good morning. It is so wonderful to see so many of our industry and international partners here today. Um it is my absolute uh pleasure and honor to talk to you this morning about uh the very first, most critical step in that vision that Jared just spoke about, the return to the moon. If I could have the next slide, please. On February 27th, just a couple of weeks ago, uh the administrator announced his bold plan to increase the cadence of missions under the Artemis program to achieve the national objective of returning to the moon. Of returning our American astronauts to the moon and establishing an enduring presence. This includes standardizing our vehicle configuration, adding an additional mission in 2027 as Jared just alluded to, and undertaking at least one crewed surface landing every year thereafter. The revised sequence enables a more rapid cadence to retain our muscle memory. We've talked about our muscle memory that's been developed during launch and flight operations, and ensures that the critical landing systems are tested with crew before attempting operations on the lunar surface, dramatically reducing our mission risk. To enable these changes, as Jared just spoke to, NASA will engage in a concerted hardware, software, and analysis acceleration effort. The effort will redeploy the workforce to engage more directly with our providers, to provide relief if needed, and bring some of the manufacturing in-house if necessary. Looking beyond Artemis 5, NASA plans to work with at least two launch providers, initially targeting landings every 6 months with the potential to increase the cadence as the capabilities mature. An RFI has just been released at the beginning of this presentation, or should have been at the beginning of this presentation, to solicit information uh from our established commercial providers and new industry entrants to help shape NASA's long-term strategy to transition from government-driven missions to the commercially sustained lunar transportation ecosystem for Artemis 6 and beyond. If I could have the next slide, please. We're following the proven stepwise approach that was demonstrated by the Apollo missions to methodically reduce risk incrementally and increase the likelihood of mission success. If I could have the next slide. Uh with Artemis, we're applying the same stepwise approach. Each step needs to be big enough to make progress, but not so big that we take unnecessary risks given and based on our previous learnings. In this model, Artemis 2, as we all are aware, will demonstrate Orion crewed operations including critical tests of environmental control and life support systems and manual spacecraft maneuvering as part of a proximity operations demonstration prior to the translunar injection. Artemis 3 is now being replanned as an Earth orbit test flight demonstrating integrated launches with rendezvous and docking demonstrations with one or both of the lander providers. Artemis 4 will perform will perform the first crewed landing in early 2028, and Artemis 5 is targeted later in 2028 to further accelerate towards establishing the lunar base. If I could have the next slide. I'm going to take a couple of moments to talk about Artemis 2. Near and dear, this is the very first critical step in the success of this plan. We've got to successfully complete Artemis 2. And I got a lot of great things to tell you about it. Next slide. Came to my realization over the last couple of days. I've been talking about launching on April 1st for a few weeks now and then the last couple days it came I just kind of came to my mind that's 1 week from tomorrow. 1 week. Yes. I can tell you I was just out at the pad last Friday as we rolled the spacecraft back out to the pad. We've been tracking it day by day in the preparations leading up to launch. And I can tell you that as of this moment right now there are no major issues that we're working. We are doing everything according to plan. We're following the plan. We'll be watching the weather very closely over the next week. We'll also be staying alert for anything that may go a little astray. We want to ensure that our astronauts our three American and Canadian crew are all safe for this for this mission. We've already passed our final big review the flight readiness review on March 11th and 12th. So that milestone is behind us. And we are now as I said aiming for April 1st. The launch window extends from the 1st through the 6th. And there should be about four attempts possible within that 6-day period. We can go to the next slide. Thank you. So I'll give you just a little bit about the mission plan for Artemis 2. I like to basically break it up into about four phases. I'm not going to speak to everything on this slide but we can think of it in four different parts. The first part of the mission is the launch and then we go into this 24-hour high Earth orbit. While we're in that high Earth orbit, we are going to check out the environmental control and life support systems. This is the newest piece for Artemis 2 and the critical piece for supporting our crew and keeping them safe and healthy throughout the mission. While we're in that 24-hour orbit, we will also conduct the proximity operations demonstration. Once we have separated from the ICPS the interim cryogenic propulsion stage our upper stage, we will use the manual controls in Orion to approach and then regress and then approach the ICPS to see and get better feel for how those controls respond to the to the crews direction. Once we're confident that all of the systems are operating within the Orion spacecraft at the completion of that 24-hour orbit, we will perform the translunar injection which sets us on the path to the moon around and back where we'll use the moon's gravity to bring us back. It's a free return trajectory. So that second phase is about four days out to the moon. And then we have the third phase which is the lunar flyby where we'll get to observe the far side of the moon and hopefully break the record the Apollo record for the farthest any human has ever flown from Earth. And then we begin the cruise back about another four days back to Earth. The final part of the mission is the re-entry to Earth's atmosphere and splashdown off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean. We'll work closely with our partners at the Department of War to recover the crew, bring them safely to shore and return them to Johnson Space Center. So I hope you all have as much excitement as I do. I'm starting to get goosebumps. Please stay tuned and and watch along with us over the coming week and I hope to see many of you at the launch next week. If I could have the next slide. Oh, it's up already. Artemis 3 as we mentioned is now the new Earth orbit docking demonstration in 2027 and we are really excited about this mission. And I want to talk about all the preparations we've already made and how ready we are to execute on this mission in 2027. The hardware for Artemis 3 is very mature. And we're working to meet the 2027 launch readiness. As soon as we complete the launch of Artemis 2, we will assess the condition of the mobile launch pad. We made significant changes to ruggedize the mobile launcher following Artemis 1 and so we anticipate the ability to turn the pad around very quickly and begin preparations for stacking of the Artemis 3 rocket. The space launch system hardware, the rocket hardware, most of it a lot of it's already at Kennedy Space Center. We'll have a lot more of it there very very soon. The interim cryogenic propulsion stage and the ICPS is ready. We may need it for Artemis 3. We may save it for Artemis 4 but it is ready. The boosters the solid rocket boosters have been ready for a while. They were just waiting for space in the vehicle assembly building. We anticipate shipping those and receiving them at KSC in April later in April. The engine section for the core stage for Artemis 3 is already in the vehicle assembly building undergoing integration work. The RS-25 engines are ready and they're shipping in April. The top four-fifths of the core stage should be shipping from the Michoud Assembly Facility in April actually a week or two after the Artemis 2 mission completes. We expect to receive those down at Kennedy Space Center. The core stage. And the the launch vehicle stage adapter is also ready in storage at Marshall Space Flight Center and we anticipate that shipping to KSC as well. Next slide. >> [clears throat] >> Our Orion team is also working hard to meet the challenge of a 2027 launch. All elements are already at the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center and significant progress is already underway. The Orion service module is in testing and checkout making great progress. The heat shield that you see in the middle here has completed its fabrication and and assembly and it's in its final preparations to be ready to be integrated into the Orion crew module. The service module is also uh being integrated and tested. We've got the service module, the crew module. We've got all the piece parts. We are in that integration stage. The next slide, please. Of course in order to perform this important docking demonstration, we are going to partner closely with both of our human system providers. The goal for this mission is for Orion to dock with one or both of those landers and both of the HLS providers already have been given a task. They were given that task immediately following Jared's announcement to assess the options for this new Artemis 3 mission profile. In preparations, we're watching closely the development of both lander systems. The Starship flight test number 12 we anticipate happening in April hopefully no no earlier than but hopefully in April will be the first flight of their version 3 which is a major step towards a lunar landing capability. The Blue Origin Mark 1 which is their predecessor to the Mark 2 human lander. They've invested a great deal in the Mark 1 lander and anticipate launching that within a few months. Very excited it's going to be flying one of Nikki's clips payloads. And we'll be watching. There's a lot of commonalities with the systems needed for the human lander that will buy down risk with this Mark 1 mission. Back in the fall of 2025, NASA already began working with both of the providers to accelerate the human landing to 2028. Those accelerated landers are what we will be using for the Artemis 3 rendezvous and docking demonstration to buy down the risks. I had the next slide, please. So as soon as the administrator made his announcement, we began actively assessing the specifics of the mission profile and the objectives that can be addressed in this mission. The new mission will endeavor to include a rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers as I said from SpaceX and Blue Origin. It will include in-space tests of the docked vehicles and integrated checkout of life support, the docked vehicles, the communications and the propulsion systems. We also really hope to be able to include the new extravehicular activity suits in the landers to help reduce future risks on their development. NASA will further define this test flight after we complete the detailed reviews that we are conducting right now actively between NASA and our industry partners. And the agency will of course share the specifics the specific objectives for the updated Artemis 3 mission very in the very very near future. The primary objectives that we're considering as part of this mission profile include things like demonstrating the multi-launch campaign coordination. This is not simple. We need to have multiple rockets launching in a coordinated fashion such that we can all meet up together in space at the same time and place. Of course the Orion rendezvous and proximity operations with the landers in orbit one of the primary objectives. We want to work through crude docking operations. We would really like to test those surface suits if possible. We'll be testing the critical lander systems and lander vehicle performance while in Earth orbit. And we'll be looking at performance of the new Orion permeable heat shield. We have the new more permeable heat shield we'll be flying on Orion for Artemis 3. And while the Earth orbit won't put quite the demands on it that we would have returning from the moon, we will gather important data on the performance of that heat shield. We'll also get practice in increasing the mission cadence with a prompt turnaround of the pad and the ground systems really parsing that system to do a quick turnaround. And we've talked a lot about the muscle memory and with this mission we'll really demonstrate our ability to support the increasing mission cadence. With Artemis 4 in early 2028, NASA's undertaken an effort to work with both of the HLS providers to request and assess their proposals to accelerate the lander development. Jared referred to that earlier. This includes modifications to our requirements and then also to um the uh the surface things that we want them to do on the surface and how we want them to work with us. We've got requirements to the hardware, the mission definitions, capabilities that enable us to move faster. We're really focusing on how can we move faster? The intent with this change, with trying to pull these forward and working with both providers is to fly with whichever provider is ready first for 2027. We've already made significant progress on the government side of the hardware that's required for Artemis 4 both on the SLS and the Orion. The solid rocket booster segments are complete. The after skirts for the boosters are in their final production. The core stage engine section for Artemis 4 is actually already at Kennedy Space Center. The RS-25 engines are in storage. The the top 4/5 of the core stage are in their in their manufacturing at at Michoud Assembly Facility. And the Orion crew module is also in its final assembly at O&C at Kennedy Space Center. And the Orion service module that's provided by our European partners is also well into its integration in Germany. We had the I'm sorry. Artemis 4 is here at KSC. Sorry. Getting it lost in my track here. We've got a lot of stuff here. Artemis 4 is here at at Kennedy Space Center. It's already getting integrated. Um as I mentioned, we only have one more ICPS. We're in the process of determining whether it would be used for Artemis 3 or 4. But as part of the plan to standardize production of the transportation system, the exploration upper stage that was previously planned for Artemis 4 has been replaced with the Centaur 5, which is a proven capability as part of the ULA Vulcan launch system. Right now, all of our programs are actively engaged in understanding what modifications will be needed to be to be implemented in order to transition from ICPS to the Centaur 5 upper stage. The new generation suits are being developed by Axiom to support NASA's lunar surface extravehicular activities. This is a significant effort and critical to our ability to execute the first landed mission. NASA's accelerating this effort and we're providing direct support at Axiom facilities and suppliers to increase the collaboration accelerate hardware production. The Axiom suits are being planned for checkout as I said, hopefully on Artemis 3 or possibly additionally on the ISS. The suits for the mission for Artemis 4 will be delivered to the human landing system for integration. Again, both of our providers for Artemis 4 are working on simplifying their profiles to accelerate the initial landings and those surface capabilities. The primary goal of this mission for Artemis 4 is to execute the first crewed landing since 1972. While in orbit around the moon, the two crew will have two crew transfer from Orion to the commercial lander and then which will safely transport those two crew to the surface of the moon and then ultimately bring them back to rendezvous with Orion in lunar orbit. While they're on the moon, the two crew will demonstrate surface operations including deployment of science instruments and conducting an integrated surface science campaign. Both of the providers are required to complete a successful uncrewed landing prior to carrying any of our crew. We've been looking and talking with both of the providers. SpaceX has been considering alternative alternatives of their current Starship design of the the HLS Starship design while implementing a more streamlined approach to try and speed things up and pull things forward. The Blue Origin approach implements existing capabilities that they have today as a stepping stone toward their eventual full capacity architecture. We've asked the both teams for feedback, how can we help simplify these missions and how can we speed up the landing? And the overarching themes that we've heard from both SpaceX and Blue Origin were first off, can we please avoid the near rectilinear halo orbit? Can we please avoid NRHO to help reduce the HLS workload, what's required of that system and also improve lunar surface mission planning flexibility. We've also heard that simplifying the mission requirements for this initial mission while maintaining their long-term capability is also a strong desire. We want to simplify, but we also want to make sure we're building towards the future. So it's important to assure that whatever architecture we're using for Artemis 4 feeds forward to what's going to be needed in the future. In response to the feedback that we've received from SpaceX and Blue Origin, we are indicating and we have indicated to both of them that we are open to other non-NRHO lunar orbits. Some of these orbits could reduce our crew risk with abort opportunities that are available in hours versus up to a week if we were in NRHO parking orbit. It also opens up flexibility in surface mission planning allowing us perhaps access to different sites on the surface or flexibility in the timing of when we land. The intent of offering alternate orbits is to balance the Orion and lander performance by parking closer to the moon and being able to have that more frequent or easier access. We're also looking at the surface requirements, trying to make them simple and sustainable. We're looking at more flexible surface planning that supports simplified interfaces leading to accelerated development. We are of course also looking for them maintaining that long-term capability. So the simplification of the requirements allows us to focus on achieving the near-term goals while also preserving the long-term goals through evolution of the lander capabilities to support our exploration goals. Looking forward in working with the providers and with our teams within NASA, we're very focused on looking at the cross program and mission planning. There are critical Orion interfaces and those interface definitions need to be updated. They require being updated to trying to understand what it means in these new parking orbits that are closer to the moon and different mission profiles. So we're in the process of assessing that all right now. Moving on to Artemis 5, which will be the second landed mission in late 2028 as we begin our preparations for a lunar base. There's significant hardware again already in development for Artemis 5. Orion crew module, European service module, this one is in Germany still, but we expect it to be delivered next fall. They're on an excellent yearly cadence of providing those service modules. We've got engines in production, boosters in productions and the core stage already also in manufacturing. So I'd like to wrap up here. I just want to hope to close with the impression that you'll take away that we are enthusiastic and excited to execute on these accelerated timelines. The new Artemis 3 mission standardizes the architecture and will reduce risks ahead of the first lunar landing. We have the hardware, we have the skills, we have the capabilities to accelerate and we know this administration is committed to removing any of the obstacles that are slowing us down. We're also prepared to advocate for increased supply chain criticality and we're poised to deploy the NASA workforce to build components ourselves if necessary. We're already embedding NASA personnel at key contractors and suppliers as active, not passive participants in the supply chain to assure that the key components that we need are not keeping us from landing on the moon first. Internally, we're in the process of building new analysis tools that provide us insight and real-time resolution of challenges across the entire Artemis enterprise. And to assure that we're all moving and working toward the common goal, the administrator has invited the company leaders from each of our prime industry partners to brief him within the next few weeks on the actions they're taking to meet the accelerated schedule. As I noted at the beginning, we're signaling demand and dropping an RFI for two pathways for crewed missions to the moon beyond Artemis 5. The first step in this journey begins with the Artemis 2 launch on April 1st when Reid Victor, Christina Jeremy embark on their historic journey around the moon. I hope you'll be watching. Hope you'll be watching very closely, hopefully from the Cape as we lay the foundation for Artemis 3, 4, 5 and beyond. And as administrator Isaacman has said repeatedly, we may not have captured full global attention yet, but I'm absolutely certain that as we embark on Artemis 2, 3, 4 and 5 the come in the coming years, we will captivate the world. We're honored to have you working alongside us to further world-changing science and discovery. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Please remain with us. We will be coming back after a brief 10-minute break. We shall return. This is a live look. We will see things that no human has ever seen. We want to know what's out there just [music] beyond the horizon. >> Amazing live views from the spacecraft. Coming back to Earth, they were doing like 5 or 7 miles 7 miles a second. Those are just not numbers that humans generally think about. We were always [music] going to the moon. Pushing ourselves to explore is core to who we are. Three. It's in our nature. One. That's a part of being a human. And liftoff. 6 million pounds on the pad. 250,000 miles. Boosters have separated. When humanity sets big goals, we can accomplish extraordinary [music] things. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> We will be resuming programming in 2 minutes, so please make your way back to your seats. Again, we are resuming the program in 2 minutes, so please get back to your seats. Okay, do you want Do you want to Should I just say like Again, reminder that we will be starting shortly, so if everybody could please take their seats. One more reminder that we need everybody to take their seats so that we can resume programming. So, please take your seats. >> [applause] >> Welcome to the stage NASA Moon base program executive Carlos Garcia Galan. >> [applause] >> Good morning everybody. I'm Carlos Garcia Galan. I'm your Moon base guy. The first thing I want to do though is I want to address the Gateway program. National space policy is prioritizing sending the astronauts to the lunar surface and also building an outpost on the moon. And when we evaluated the current Gateway architecture, which is focused on building an orbiting outpost, while that is still relevant for future exploration goals, is not required to accomplish our primary objectives. As a result, we're announcing today that NASA is pivoting the Gateway architecture to focus on building the Moon base. We're going to focus our resources, the people, and all of our efforts on the surface and any orbital supporting elements to achieve that. There were other considerations that we assessed when making this decision. For example, the HLS providers and the performance penalties that we're incurring in trying to get to the orbit that we had selected for Gateway and some other challenges that are still ahead of us with developing the modules and putting them in orbit. For example, right now we were projecting to achieve the first initial capability in 2030s. And as you're going to see today, we have a lot of things between now and then that we want to be focusing on. Consequently, we're going to be starting to work on evaluating what is it that we have today in terms of hardware, capabilities, facilities, and we're going to basically shift those to be focusing directly on what is what we're going to do on the surface of the moon. NASA, working together with our industry partners with Gateway and also our international partners, are going to be putting together options and concepts on how we take everything we got and we make it work for us towards building the Moon base. Many facilities that we were using are already we're already designed for an evolving architecture with the orbiting outpost. So, those will be easy to transition. For example, our laboratories that we were going to use for integration test verifications, we're going to be transitioning those. Also, we have significant amount of hardware in advanced state like the power and propulsion element, which you're going to see later on today how we're going to transition that to meet one of our near-term objectives. In addition, the habitation logistic outpost module, which is also being built here in the United States, there's many subsystems and components that potentially we could use in other habitation modules for for the Moon base. So, all of that is just beginning today. We're going to do it together with our partners. And in addition to like hardware and facilities, the NASA Gateway team, it is going to pivot to also focusing on our objectives on the surface of the moon and some of the other things we're going to hear about today. Additionally, we're working with our international partners to basically make this transition together. Figure out how we repurpose the partnerships that we have and we go hand in hand in this transition, this pivot to the surface of the moon. Having said that, let's talk about the Moon base. President Trump's vision for space exploration requires that we establish the initial elements of a lunar outpost by 2030. What you're looking at today is certainly not the initial elements. It's more of our vision of what it would look like in the future. So, when you look at this picture, I'm going to ask you a few times today to transport yourselves to the future and to the lunar surface. When you look at this picture, it's very clear to that to execute this vision, we're going to need to achieve the near impossible. But, this is what we do. We're NASA. We're going to have to deploy systems in very high cadence that will survive extremes in temperature, illumination, and very complex and rugged terrain with very steep slopes. Everything that we're going to want to do in the moon, unfortunately, is hard to get to. So, all of these things we're going to have to do together and eventually support permanent astronaut habitation there, which is no small feat. We can only do this with a vibrant American industry base and our international partners. And in addition to that, we're going to leverage the entire might of the NASA workforce from core competencies to facilities to our ingenuity to make sure that this dream happens. We're going to ensure that American leadership remains in space and on Earth leveraging doing things that today seems like science fiction. It does look like science fiction, but guess what? We're planning to turn that into reality. And with your help, we're going to inspire the world in the process. But, this picture of the moon is not going to show up overnight. That's not what we're going to end up. We're going to build it in phases. Phase one, which is starts today, is all about getting to the moon reliably, learning how to get there in high cadence, deploying assets in different in different areas of the moon where we think we may want to build this Moon base. We're going to experiment with new technologies that we know we're going to need for future infrastructure development to support that permanent habitation. And we're going to actually start the infrastructure in this phase that goes from now to 2028. That infrastructure is going to start with constellations of communication satellites that can also do observation. Transitioning to phase two, which we estimate will start around 2029, we're going to think about establishing the infrastructure. So, we've tested some new technologies. We're transitioning to actually establishing and laying out what we think are permanent elements of that infrastructure. We're going to talk about this, but it includes power, surface communication, surface preparation, and mobility. And then once that's set established, we're going to transition into achieving semi-permanent and permanent crew presence on the Moon base. So, that is going to include habitation modules and everything we need to keep the crews alive and enable them to do groundbreaking science and exploration on the surface of the moon. Go to the next chart, please. So, the moon has a surface area about the size of the continent in Africa. Imagine, you know, talking about why are we going back to the moon? Imagine sending six missions to Africa for short duration and saying, "Hey, we've explored. We've learned everything we need." We're going to start doing that again. The lunar South Pole, for example, it's about the size of the state of Virginia. So, I think you can go one one page up. Oh, there you go. We got it. This false color image that you see is the dramatic terrain that's in the lunar South Pole. The Shackleton crater, for example, is one of the areas where we're interested in going. That is double the depth of the Grand Canyon. I don't know if any of you have had the chance to hike the Grand Canyon. I have. So, it's quite impressive and we actually want to explore in the areas of the bottom. We're going to have to build systems that also provide power, mobility, and habitation around those places and also consider lighting. Like you see today, some of these areas that are very interested for science and exploration uh are sometimes permanently shadowed or have significant length of shadow period. So, having systems there that can survive uh the temperature gradients that we're going to see and the lighting are going to be critical. Unlike the lunar equator, the ratio of sunlight can really widely change. And it when you the sun comes up, it's not like on Earth or in different places on Earth where you see it just straight sunrise or the equator of the moon. It's going to basically hover in the horizon. So, power systems and even communication having to go through those craters to to work is going to be very challenging. So, let's talk a little bit about phase one. Go one one more slide. Uh phase one, these are the like top-down objectives to establish the types of things we're going to need in the missions that I'm going to talk about in a minute. We want to achieve high-rate reliable surface access. Talked about that. Establish the ground truth for the moon base landing sites. We have a ton of data from satellites, a little bit of data from rovers and other probes and landers we've sent, but there's nothing like going there and experiencing that environment that I was talking about and prospecting and looking around. So, we need to do that in phase one with uh high rate of uh assets. We also need to test and experiment on the technologies that we think we're going to need. They're not a nice to have, we got to make sure that we understand how those are going to work in that environment. And we're going to host the first crewed mission to the South Pole in this phase. So, if you're an astronaut, transport yourself back. If you look at the perimeter of the moon base, you're basically going to see, of course, your ride to the moon and back to Earth. You're going to see other landers that were there before you. And then several of other landers and rovers that we were using to achieve that high rate and that prospecting. So, this is kind of what it would look like to achieve that. Go to the next slide. We're investing significantly and projecting about 25 launches, 21 landings in that period of time. We're going to put about 4,000 kg of payloads on the surface. So, the payload capacity is going to uh drastically change. We're hoping changing the paradigm of what we've been able to do on the moon. We're going to also deploy two lunar orbital comm satellite constellations to have reliable comm and observation. And then we're going to do technology demonstrations like radio isotope heating units, which are key to address some of the challenges we were talking about before. If you go to the next slide, these are just imposed on the picture some of the things that we're planning to do. I talked about the constellations that will give you navigation, comm, and observation. We're going to have drones on the moon, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later. We of course will have the human landing system. We're going to use the clips program that we have today, drastically expanding that to do that high cadence of landers. And then we're going to do a series of different demonstration. And some of these key missions I'm going to talk about in more detail in a minute, but certainly the uh radio isotope heating units uh to survive the night, lunar terrain vehicles, rovers of different kinds, all of those are in our plans. Go to the next slide. I'm going to start talking a little bit about some of the key characteristics of the key assets that we want to put in there. So, lunar terrain vehicles. Uh these vehicles are about the size of a golf cart. There's two versions of them. One is going to be crewed and one is going to be uncrewed. The crewed version, of course, is going to allow the astronauts on an EVA suit to move around farther distances from their landing site, potentially going from the landing site to the areas where we're going to start setting up some of the elements of the moon base. And the uncrewed version, equally important, is where we're going to be able to do exploration and prospecting. We're going to put payloads on them, maybe some of the technology demos. Imagine perhaps a a lunar terrain vehicle with an RHU attached to it or maybe carrying something related to surface preparation to see what things work and what things don't. Can this thing, you know, push a rock on the moon? Can we level? Uh those type of things we're going to explore. And here you have some of the key uh characteristics. 5 500 kg. It can go up pretty steep slopes. 20° doesn't seem like a lot, but if there's any cyclists here, you know that that's uh pretty impressive. Uh surviving 150 hours in the shadow and about a speed of about 10 km per hour. Let's talk about the next one. Lunar drones. We're calling this Moonfall. So, I'm pretty excited about this one. This is built on the legacy of the Ingenuity helicopters on Mars. Obviously, we can't have helicopters on the moon, but we're going to take everything we learned from GNSS systems and uh the avionics, all of that to uh to build this. It's going to be used for site surveillance and terrain survey. Uh We're going to we want to send this to places that are hard to reach, which is, you know, by the way, points where maybe are the regions where where we see more sunlight or maybe are places where eventually we may want to put a lunar cell comm tower. So, we're going to send them to do the prospecting. And potentially they could host a variety of payloads as well. Like an RHU, for example, to to to further survive the night. Here's a video with some of the characteristics. So, the drones themselves are going to be independent from each other. They're independent spacecraft. We'll bring them in and basically deploy them. Deploy them as the spacecraft is is coming in. And uh each drone is going to be capable of basically several propulsive hops that can go about 50 km each in total. And then uh it's about 150 seconds from launch to landing on each hop. And then eventually we'll uh we'll place them in a place when we're run out of fuel where maybe they can if they have uh something that allows them to survive the night and stay longer periods of time, we can leave them there and have a function like maybe communications or something like that. Of course, everything we talk about is going to have pretty awesome cameras. The next one is uh that I want to talk about is communications and observation satellites. Communications is key. We can put all the assets we want, but if we cannot get their data back or even look at prospecting from the top to see what things are doing or bring you along for the ride, uh you know, we're going to get much lower value of that. So, building a constellation of satellites where very very used to this on Earth, as you know, GPS, communications anywhere in the world, we got to establish that on the moon as well. So, we want to increase the throughput uh to about more than 500 megabits per second. Uh we want to increase and establish a good amount of surface links to orbit links. And uh basically being able to communicate with our assets anytime we want. We're also going to start uh establishing protocols. So, I mean, we're going to all the stuff we're going to put on the moon, we want to make sure that is uh you know, standard. And even though the initial set may not have those requirements, we want to test some stuff in phase one. So, maybe by phase two or three, we can deploy those protocols and have a unified comm system on the moon as we develop other capabilities. If you go to the next one, another one I'm excited about, the VIPER rover. VIPER is also another golf cart-size rover. It's built. It's tested. It's ready for a ride, and now we're going to give it one. Uh it's going to go in the Blue Origin uh lander, serial number two, which is scheduled to go to the lunar South Pole by 2027. What it's used for, it's going to map the water and volatiles for lunar resource prospecting. And this are critical for some of the reasons why we want to go to the moon. Some of these areas that have permanent or semi-permanent shadows have things that are billions volatiles that are billions of years old. And we're going to go after those things and to try to understand our universe, where we come from, uh our neighborhood, to to say in a different way. So, yeah, this rover is going to get deployed. It's going to help us do a lot of the prospecting and trying to find out where are the cool places to go do science on the moon. Next one. Radio radio isotope demos. Uh I talked a little bit about the lighting conditions on the South Pole. Very challenging. So, lighting, of course, is related to also the thermal environment that these assets are going to see on the moon. As a matter of fact, at the beginning in phase one, some of the things we put there are not going to last very long because of this very reason. So, anything we can do to not rely necessarily on solar power and allow the assets to get heating and maybe some power is going to be golden for our ability to take that forward. So, we're actually trying to incentivize any of the people that have landers, if you can find an RHU or anything related to that that works for your asset, bring it on, and we're going to reward you for that. As a matter of fact, also, we're thinking of several things along this area, but I'm going to talk about these later, too. We're going to put an RFI today, dropping it, for any ideas that you may have. Uh We we want to hear them. So, anything in this uh in related to this uh uh technology area is going to be good. Uh basically, we want to put things that will help the lander survive more than 120 hours of continuous operations in darkness and be able to send signals back to Earth. Let's see. Let's go to the next chart. So, all in all, this is phase one for you. Uh it's very challenging timeline. That we completely understand that, but as I show you in the first picture, we need to achieve the near impossible so we cannot operate the way we've been talking and operating until now. We're committing about a $10 billion investment in these years through 2028. In 2026, we already have two missions planned to the South Pole using our clips program that we're folding in into the moon base. 2027, we're drastically increasing that mission cadence with 10 launches to put nine landers. And all of this we're going to do depending on what we get from solicitations, the stuff we have on the books today. So, these numbers are obviously approximate. In 2028, we're going to we want to maintain that cadence and potentially do 12 launches to put 12 10 landers on the surface including the HLS provided landers for demos and of course to bring the crew for the first time. Go to the next chart. Okay, let's talk about phase two. So, all right, we've learned how to get to the moon reliably. We've tested technologies. Now, we're transitioning into we're building the moon base. So, we're laying out infrastructure to uh be able to support the habitation modules later. We're going to drastically increase the clips lander payload mass capacity to about five metric tons. With we're going to use some of also the heavy cargo landers. So, there's a lot more than that coming, but from clips perspective, we're wanting to increase the size of the landers and their ability to take cargo. We're going to do technology demos to enable lunar uh permanence. And we're going to at this point, we would like to increase our crew visits to the moon base doing it semi-annually. So, two missions per year. Top objectives. All right, back to the moon. Think about if you were an astronaut, what would you look at if you're looking at the moon base? So, you saw some of the rovers that you saw in phase one. Maybe some of them are not working anymore, but they're still there. You see additional rovers with increased capability. Uh definitely, you see lunar terrain vehicles that have been hard at work maybe preparing the surface for a potential habitation module or multiple modules we're going to connect. Uh you see some of the infrastructure that's coming about like solar tower masts and so forth. So, if you go to the next chart, that's about what it looks like. 27 launches, 24 landings, seven rovers, and drastically increasing the payload capacity that we want to put on the lunar surface. By this time, we would like to also have you see uh a pressurized rover that we're doing with our partners at JAXA. Uh you see solar power stations. Uh definitely, we're building up on this nuclear capability. Maybe graduated from RHUs to RTGs, maybe something else if if we get good ideas from you guys. So, we'll start setting up this kind of infrastructure. And some of the assets, if you go to the next chart, in addition to what we did in phase one, uh we definitely have solar power augmentation. So, you start seeing some of those solar masts growing. We'll have RTGs. Uh maybe on a rover, maybe on a lander, maybe some things that we can connect together. We start seeing some of the infrastructure like surface communications, our cell towers, which also give us the ability to do uh navigation. Pressurized rovers, of course. Excavator rovers. So, we need to, you know, connecting things on the surface of the moon is going to be almost harder than on orbit because you got to deal with the terrain. So, we're going to work on the technology for that, but also having an even surface, even if it's just clearing up rocks, is going to be key. Site preparation logistics rovers, you know, logistics, if you want to have a vibrant moon base, you have to have a logistics train from launches to in-space transportation to landers and then getting that cargo from the landing site to where it needs to go. So, using perhaps LTVs or an extension of other rovers, we're going to have to experiment and start setting that up from when crews are are coming there. All right, so transition to let's talk about the assets that we're going to have there. Of course, uh one of the great ones is the pressurized rover that again we're doing with our partners in in Japan. Uh it's a mobile habitat that is going to extend the human exploration range. They'll be able to work in a short sleeve environment. So, it's kind of a habitation on wheels. And will that will allow them to travel significant amount of distance. Of course, they will have power systems and so forth. Uh we're designing this to have a 10-year design life and it's about 15 metric tons. So, of course, to deliver that pressurized rover, we're going to have a heavy cargo lander already in the books. Can traverse uh quite a few quite a few degrees of slope and then survive up to 150 hours in the shade. The whopping speed is 3.5 km/h. But trust me, if you're in that, you probably don't want to go any faster. So, anyway, pressurized rover. Uh transition to solar power augmentation. Power is the name of the game. All of these things we're showing require power. Some of them require power to heat themselves during the long shadow periods. So, we need to demonstrate the ability to deploy these systems, test them, and then chain them together eventually to be able to provide the power that we need for the moon base. Uh so, anyway, we're we're definitely going to be investing in this capability, deploying it, testing it. We're looking, you know, when we deploy some of those permanent assets, we're looking at about 10 kW plus during illumination. And then when we're in the shade, 360 kW hours uh for the assets that we want to serve. You're thinking, okay, we have habitation modules, it's for that, but we also have a bunch of rovers. So, maybe having stations where the rovers come in, hook up to it either with, you know, cables and connectors or wirelessly and charge up is some of the things we're going to have to do. All right, next. In the theme of infrastructure, which is really the theme of phase two, surface communication. So, we want to establish and expand the network to enable more throughput, more connections, constant communication with our surface assets. Uh we want to deploy dedicated service to orbital communication stations. And you see a little bit of a picture of that in in the landscape. Uh and deploy the system for direct communication across the surface. And again, I talked about earlier with craters uh all over the place, which is where we want to be. It is going to be hard to achieve. There's a lot of multi-pathing. There's hard to light hard to find line of sight places to communicate directly. So, all of that, even though we all know communications, doing it on the surface of the moon in the South Pole is not going to be easy. We're looking at perhaps 10 km range of direct line of sight. That that's what we want to achieve. All right. And then one of my favorites, the site preparation and logistics rovers. We're already starting I'm going to show you a video of that later. We're starting to experiment with this on the ground. Uh so, these are rovers that are deployed uh to start working on surface prep. And uh we want them to last long so they can be working for us while the crews are preparing to launch to come to the lunar base. We're thinking this is a key capability for the lunar terrain vehicles, the up-scale version two that we want to be deploying during phase two. And also, we may want to be doing some excavation and compaction. I know this very challenging in 1/6 gravity. We know that. Uh we're testing like what you see here and you'll see in the video is like double drum to even out that stuff out. But there's many challenges that I'm sure you can come up and have maybe good ideas that we want to hear about. We're going to be investing in this capability as well. And then if you go to the next chart, nuclear surface power capability. So, we talked about experimenting a lot. Maybe the beginning uh in phase one is really just to heat yourself while you're in the long lunar night. But now we're going to want to be working on these things to supply power to multiple assets to so they can survive the night and eventually also provide power for operations. So, we're talking about hundreds of watts. Demonstrate technology, process, and operations uh at the larger scale connected together thermal management concepts for larger applications. Anything related to systems that can give us a significant amount of power. So, um anyway, you'll if you're working on that stuff, you'll be excited to hear that today. All right, so if you rack and stack phase two, which goes from 29 through 32. 29, we're planning approximately six launches, five landings, two rovers. The cadence the number looks smaller, but all of these systems are heavier. So, we're more in the medium to large class of landers at this point. So, the delivery of mass is greater, but, you know, the numbers are a little bit less. So, 29, six launches, five landings, two rovers, two surface infrastructure elements, 37 launches, six landings, two rovers, four moon base drones with upgraded capabilities. 31, seven launches, seven landings, two rovers, three surface infrastructure elements. And in 32, seven launches, six landings, one rover, and more drones. The This may not be exact, but these are the numbers we're working for, and we want to show you the signal that we are This is the type of cadence we think we're going to need to develop this moon base in the time frames that we want. So, we're going to talk about challenges, and clearly is perhaps out of our experience base. That's where we need to get together, come up with the things, identify things that are slowing us down, preventing this type of cadence, working on that together, addressing it head-on, and putting it in play. All right, phase three. So, top-level objectives. Long duration and long distance human exploration. We want to increase the clips lander payload mass capacity to eight metric tons. We want to do a bunch of regolith manipulation and site preparation capable rovers. We want to start the routine logistic flights uh to deliver to Earth. And then we'll do initial uncrewed mission cargo returns, maybe up to 500 kg. So, we start having a serious both ways uh train of logistics. Back to the moon. Uh Just take a moment to really picture yourself in an astronaut suit, looking around, and imagining what you would see there. Definitely see a bunch of uh infrastructure for power, both potentially nuclear, which is maybe shielded, to a bunch of solar array towers that are either directly connected to the habitation modules, or perhaps on the side at different locations providing power to some of the assets that are moving around. Pressurized rovers, advanced LTVs, and then uh different landing sites for human landings, cargo landings, and you know, potentially launching cargo vehicles back to Earth with a bunch of moon regolith. This is kind of the stats. Uh at this point we're talking about 150,000 kg of payload on the surface when you account for all these things that we're talking about. One more chart. So, again, some of the highlights that I've been talking about. Habitats. That's the highlight of the moon base in its end state, and what we're going to be focusing on phase three. Logistics. Can't talk enough about logistics and the need for that relative to do it reliably. We've learned Anything we've done long duration, whether it's on Earth, uh lower Earth orbit, uh we we know we need logistics. So, I mean, everything that has uh uh anything related to that. In situ manufacturing or resource utilization. Uh We're going to start seeing some sites on the moon that are kind of like the industrial neighborhood where we're trying some of that technology and also using it to actually keep the moon base growing and viable. We'll have different for habitats, and then widespread power distribution. And then we'll see an increase on communications as well, surface, and potentially we have additional constellations at this point. Okay, so the focus areas for phase three, uh talked about logistics. I won't impress that upon you anymore, but we're thinking about 8,000 kg of uh carriers, consumables, and all other items. Some of the challenging stuff is going to be to go get the stuff from where it is and put it where it needs to be. So, when the crews come, uh there it's there for them, and you know, what we know from doing permanent habitation in low Earth orbit, uh for the crews, you know, that you need clothes. Of course, you need water, you need air. Uh you know, there there's a lot of mass for even short duration missions, like a month staying there for a month requires a significant logistics and supply capability. So, we go to the next chart, we'll talk about habitats, star of the show in this phase. So, we want to enable continuous human presence there. Uh we potentially are looking at multiple locations. We would like to expand into different modules that are connected together, but we'll evaluate if that's the best play. We definitely want to expand our capabilities in ECLSS, surface mating, and of course, airlocks. We are, you know, we're going to be experimenting with this, and of course, the pressurized rover, and the things we have already done with ISS, all touch on these things, but we It's going to be the next layer of complexity when we try to go to the moon. The basics, uh uh air, water, food, space, all of those things, uh few nights in space uh in the size of a minivan is manageable, but when we expand to short trips, uh those those needs get much bigger. Uh let's see. I think I'm going to move to the next chart. Cargo return. So, uh initial demo we'll do in phase two, but here we want to use it at full scale. So, at phase three, we want to definitely increment and implement a capability of uh a mass goal of 500 kg sustainably. So, here we'll put our science returns, critical hardware, and anything we can do to inspire the world will have a place in our cargo return missions. All right, and then the last one I talked about this a little bit earlier, but uh in situ resource utilization and manufacturing as well. Uh 3D printing with regolith on the surface of the moon is something that we should be striving to do. So, we'll experiment a bunch, and then we can hopefully put this into play for phase three. This is something, you know, when we talk about moon to Mars, uh clearly when we get to Mars, we're going to need some of this capability, and when you get there, it's going to be tried and true, and something you can rely and and count on. So, that's what we're going to be learning on the moon, how to achieve that. Uh key commodities that we may extract from regolith, of course, oxygen, water in general, uh rare Earth elements, hydrogen, all of those things we're going to experiment with. Next chart. So, uh here's the timeline for uh missions in phase three. So, another about $10 billion investment in this phase. Uh we're currently planning for a capability to include three new habitats, including the multi-purpose hub that we're already planning, three more rovers, two more surface common nodes. Uh By 2033, for example, we expect them to add two rovers and our first habitat and supporting logistics capabilities, six landers over seven launches. 2034, we'll add our next habitat and supporting logistics, uh more community surface communications. 2035, one more rover, perhaps another habitat, supporting logistics, and a bunch of launches and landings. And then uh um in 2036, potentially more habitation volume and all the things that come with that. In total, when you reckon stack the three phases, this is what you end up with. So, it's pretty impressive, equally challenging. Remember, trying to achieve the near impossible here, and this is what's going to take to accomplish this this goal. So, I'm not going to reckon stack these numbers for you, but you have it there. You're going to start getting your brain around it. All right. So, the next chart, uh we talked about some of the things that we want to experiment on the moon. Of course, we can also do that on Earth. We've already started. So, here's some videos of uh folks, NASA folks, and al- also some of our industry partners working in some of this technology from rovers that can go up terrain, fuel transfer, regolith preparation, uh manufacturing, and all kinds of things, avionics, hardening. All of these things we're already investing in, and some of these things, you know, surface mating and docking. Some of these things uh are ready to go to get uh They're We're just waiting for a ride and a lander to get to the lunar surface and basically showcase what they can do, and and that's what we're going to start with. Okay, so here's uh all the cool aspects of putting assets on the surface of the moon and traversing, and potentially experimenting with what we're planning to do in the three phases. I could watch these videos all day. All right. So, uh one of the key things you go to the next chart, uh one of the key objectives that we have is not only to develop the technology that we need to eventually go to Mars, establish a moon base, uh which we have never done in deep space. It is imperative that we the next generation of engineers, communicators, explorers. We can only do that if we take you along with us. Uh we're going to basically require that every asset that we have has a bunch of cool cameras. Uh things that will give you us the perspective of what we're doing, which today is almost like science fiction, and things that will inspire people that are currently in college, high school, middle school, it's like, wow, that is what I want to do. That's what I want to dedicate my career and my life to do. And they will be the ones that come up with some of these challenging things that we don't know how to solve yet. So, we're going to have a website that we're starting already working on, where you will be able to follow us along the way from launches to things getting to the moon, to the rovers prospecting, getting to places that we have never seen. Uh we're going to enable that capability with constellations of satellites that are looking down at the moon base and checking out what things are doing. Uh we're going to follow the drones, the moonfall drones around the moon to see where they can get to and what they discover. And all of that you'll be able to do it along with us and hopefully eventually work with us in some of these cool stuff. We talked to go to the next chart. We talked a little bit about uh I mean, when I showed you that phase 1 2 3 collated set of missions and all that stuff, it's a huge challenge and we know that. To achieve the near impossible, we are driving to high volume of complex missions with challenging execution timelines. We know we're going to stress the supply chain. Maybe as of today supply chain is not ready for this. We're going to basically uh need to access reliable facilities that allow us to do the very unique testing that we have to do for surface operations, manufacturing capacity and capability, techno- technology maturation. All of those things we understand. That's why we dropped the RFI today to get your ideas on what can we do better, what's slowing you down, what are things that could turn uh your capability to enable us to turn science fiction into reality. What are those things? Bring it to us. In addition to that, and you heard administrator Isaacman talk about that earlier, we're going to use the NASA workforce in a way that perhaps we haven't in the past, especially recently. We're going to make sure that these missions are as reliable as we can make them. We don't want to impede the innovation from industry, but the things that we know how to do, we're going to embed. So, we're going to really focus our NASA workforce to basically helping you in industry, uh providing solutions. If you want them to work in line, they will be working in line. And then also reviewing the things that you're doing to make sure that we have a good shot. We're going to take a lot of shots on goal. We want to get win a lot of games as well. So, we're going to put that into play as well as we're going to do a review of our facilities. Some of them are have unique capabilities that nobody else has, and we want to put those make those available for you so we can do this together. So, again, we need your ideas. Drop them in the RFI. Okay, so we've talked a lot about what are we doing. Now we're going to talk a little bit about how we're doing it. So, we've basically uh structured this in different functional areas. Transportation, uh launch and also orbital transfer vehicles for whenever we need those, perhaps for logistics, surface mobility, uh transportation for landers, infrastructure, logistics, and habitation. So, I'm going to touch on some of these things. If you go to the next chart, we realize that we've actually been working a lot of this stuff for a while. Today, there's teams, projects, programs that are working on all of these things individually. What we want to do, and this chart is not to project a future or or anything like that. The point we want to make here is that every asset, every kilogram, all the lunar exploration resources that we have are going to be focused on one thing, and that is to build the moon base. We're going to partner with our science teams to really think about what are the capabilities we need, what are we deploying, what's the science that should go with it, and put it all together. If you go to the next chart, I'm going to basically step through some of these things. For launch and transportation, uh we're planning uh you saw the launch cadence, which is pretty significant. Moon base will leverage Kennedy Space Center's launch service program and the deep space logistics projects to their expertise to manage, sustain commercial lunar delivery services. Building from our reliable surface assets with access, which we're going to set up and starts in phase one, we will manage a commercial mixed fleet strategy that enables diverse, flexible mission support, standardized uh delivery interfaces. We're also thinking that, you know, we're going to help with perhaps helping with, you know, get the landers, get the infrastructure, and maybe have a basically a conveyor belt of landers, payloads, you know, ready to land, put them in the rocket type of thing. Moving forward, uh of course landers, uh key thing. Here's a picture of some of the things that we have been uh projecting through CLPS and HLS, things we have today. Low mass, medium class, and heavy class landers. If you go to the next chart, the CLPS program is one of the tools we're going to leverage pretty heavily. So, originally CLPS was set up to enable low-cost, uh more risk-tolerant lunar payload delivery opportunities, basically to incubate new US-led industry base to work on landers and capabilities to deploy them. What we want to do requires a lot more than that, so we're drastically expanding the CLPS program. So, uh the lander payload delivery capability is going to now go through phase three, potentially beyond. Uh we want to increase mission reliability, and that starts now. Uh we're going to we're putting things in the contract updates that we're doing to allow you to leverage the NASA expertise for both in-line work and also, you know, us looking over things that that you're doing and areas where we can help. Uh also to increase the mission quantity and cadence. Uh to achieve this goal, we're going to and I'm going to have some procurement charts also coming up and we're going to talk about extensively tomorrow, but we're going to uh release two new request for a proposal for task orders to support phase one. So, it's taking what we have today with the current providers and expanding that. Uh and then we're going to structure a way in which you can leverage on the NASA workforce more than you could before. And then we're going to release a follow-on CLPS solicitation to support phase two and three, where we're going to open up again and expand the pool of providers potentially that can bid on those things. So, definitely watch this for CLPS, and hopefully you'll get to read the solicitations and the stuff we're putting out today and be excited to participate in this building the moon base with us. All right, large cargo landers. Not going to talk about much of this cuz this is already in play with the HLS program. So, you know, uh quite a bit of capability that is in process of being available for especially for phase three, uh for phase two and three for us. Go to the next chart. Uh transportation elements. So, we talked about the launch services. Uh we'll have uh new lander opportunities with the solicitations that we already talked about. And uh some of the CLPS deliveries are are kind of summarized here. And again, we're we'll focus on the details all of all of this tomorrow with open sessions and also closed sessions with existing providers. Next chart. Okay, infrastructure. So, here's what we're going to talk about communications and also uh power. So, I'm going to step through this. And in this chart, I'm going to talk a little bit about the evolution that we're are looking for. So, when we talk about communications, here's the different things we're going to have uh wholesale at the different phases. So, phase one, we talked about the constellation of com with uh observation, and as a bonus, if we can get navigation, we'll strive for that. Then phase two, you get to the definite navigation on the on-orbit constellations in addition to surface communication, and potentially we'll also entertain the possibility of doing an atomic clock demo. So, eventually we can build up very reliable uh navigation system on the surface. So, the evolution, if you go to the next chart, please. The evolution of this in phase one, and I've talked to through some of all that some some of these capabilities already, but I wanted to kind of put it in a summary. So, orbital com, PNT, relay, deploy. We're going to deploy uh our initial five-satellite constellation that's already in progress, and we're going to look to add a second constellation that's dissimilar to that. Uh one of the things we want to do is get in there and put significant observation capabilities and start playing around with protocols that we can then count on in the future. Phase two, we go to the surface for permanence uh surface cell towers, and then simultaneous support and com from different assets. And then this is where we start building the navigation infrastructure. Phase two, phase three, excuse me, is the surface communications expanded capability with standard protocols and the same thing for navigation. Next chart is going to dive into the surface power. So, click one more and of course we'll uh start with solar and uh regenerative fuel cell type of technologies. We will go into the RHU for heating some of our assets and RTG in phase two. Definitely experiment in phase one as much as we can. This is a key infrastructure component. And then in phase two is when we're going to actually start deploying and linking things together. And then the fission surface power program is uh scheduled to deliver something on phase three for more capacity and maybe more than one thing for the capacity that we'll expect we'll need for the moon base. Next chart. Here's kind of the phase evolution of that. So, deploying the assets uh for communications, that's an infrastructure thing we're going to do in phase one. Demo uh nuclear and other things that will allow us to do the survive the night and long shadow periods. Then we transition into the deployment of the power infrastructure on phase two. Uh solar and nuclear and then you know, completing that and distributing that to all the assets during phase three. All right, mobility. There you go, one more chart. There you go. So, uh this is the combination of all the mobility assets that we plan to have. So, in phase one uh definitely a bunch of rovers of smaller size with different payloads and capabilities for prospecting and experimenting. We'll also have the lunar terrain vehicle. I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a minute, but we're going to change a little bit course on that and basically we'll have uh incremental capability build up for the LTV. So, LTVs in phase one, more capable LTVs in phase two, and even better on phase three. Uh we're definitely looking for uh international our international partners to also help in this area. This is a great opportunity uh to you know, we're going to have definitely transportation capability by this point in phase two. So, looking for what are your ideas and capabilities that you want to deploy. And again, rovers you know, from having uh prospecting to surface prep to carrying logistics around something we're going to need. Uh science rovers, of course, that's why we're going to the moon for uh to uh to do the ground breaking science. And then of course pressurized and advanced LTVs in later phases. Go to the next chart. Here's the evolution of that. Uh during clips 1.0 we already talked about delivering several rovers including VIPER, flip and the Rashid UAE rover. We were bringing in the the drones moonfall. So, those things I already talked about what they would be used for. And then the LTV phase one capability we'll talk about this a little bit more in a minute. Uh phase two, more capable LTVs with increased reliability, service life, survive the night, payload capacity. Partner rovers of course including the pressurized rover that's a big one in this phase. And then uh science of all kinds and of course landers. And then phase three we are in an operating mode with half permanent habitation there, so certainly anything you need in a moon base crewed and uncrewed of course more surface preparation, a lot of things that can do logistics movement. And all along the way partner rovers we're open for business there. All right, for the LTV I want to talk a little bit about the pivot that we're doing here. So, the original contract was really set up to deliver a fully capable crew rover to survive 10 years. So, pretty hefty requirements. In our current schedule and the challenges to get to that state we were projecting a delivery to the lunar surface by 2030. So, you can see we've shifted in our objectives because we want to start right now and we need stuff in phase one. So, this approach really put us in a cost significant cost to deliver the one asset later on. A lot of technical complexity to I have to address immediately instead of build up incrementally and schedule put us in a kind of a no fail solution space. If the rover was late or if it didn't pan out, didn't have the capabilities by 2030 we're going to need that capability pretty significant. So, we're pivoting. Uh Okay, so anyway what we're going to do is um to enable a basically gaining quicker access to crewed and uncrewed we're going to change the procurement strategy for that and basically talk to our partners that we're already on board and talk about deploying, you know, doing solicitations for much earlier, perhaps less capable rovers and then incrementally build that. So, we're changing the current contract today. Uh and then we're going to put solicitations for phase two of that. And then eventually we absolutely predict the demand of that where we have to deliver an LTV, you know, every certain months for the duration of the of the moon base. So, pretty exciting evolution where we're going to need a lot more capability. Just a little bit of a change from where we are today. And this is what it looks like from an procurement strategy perspective. I'm not going to read that to you and again we'll have sessions on this tomorrow. Next chart. Okay, habitation and logistics. So, um we go to the next chart. Uh in the picture of the moon base, this is what we're planning. Uh phase one will is when we're start really working on the technology development and trying out things for logistics deliveries. Phase two uh you know, of course we will have pressurized rover as a habitation kind of a demo and and trial. And then phase three is where we get the habitats and then the cargo return. And here's the evolution of that. So, phase two start deploying the logistics capabilities from uh 500 kg to 1.5 metric tons. Demoing some of the things related to the logistics train, demo habitation with early capability and the press rovers and then the build up of that in phase three. All in all, we go to the next chart. In the next few months this is what the procurement uh opportunities look like. From clips 1.0 uh expanding that for science payloads as well. Starting clips 2.0 is coming up. We'll be awarding that in this year. In the in the summer. Rephasing LTV uh procurement the way we had designed it. And then the moon base capabilities RFI which we really hope you take a look at and give us your ideas because you can see the next several years is going to be a insane from the perspective of the amount of capability potentially we'll be able to put on the moon. So, I hope that sends the signal to you that we want to work with you, we need you. We got to do this together. And we're starting with a significant investment to make that happen. And then uh before I close out I just want to reflect on the picture you're seeing and what that may mean. So, starting today we're building humanity's first deep space outpost. We will learn how to reliably get to the moon build habitation systems and infrastructure that conduct that allow us to conduct ground breaking science. We will take you along with us and inspire the world for generations to come. We have to do this. Just as we did with the Apollo program when we first got to the moon. NASA's partners are essential to building the systems we need to live and work in the lunar surface. We're going back to the moon, we're going to stay there and we invite you to help us build the moon base. Thank you. >> [applause] >> We will now be taking a break for lunch which is staged in the lobby, so please feel free to move about as you see fit. >> Mhm.