Sanders blames the lack of a more organized approach on the “whipsaw” of competing visions of the space program advocated by three successive presidential administrations. “We think it is trending in a good direction, but it’s very complex and there’s a lot of risk to manage.” “Three years is not a lot of time,” said Patricia Sanders, chair of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, which has been issuing warnings for months that the effort is not coordinated. Those include the Space Launch System and Orion and a number of other systems under development - from the Gateway, a small space station that will orbit the moon, to multiple landers and rovers, a ground launch system, and new spacesuits for astronauts to operate for extended periods in deep space after NASA’s first attempt to develop them had to be shelved.īut is it too late to get it right in time for a planned moon landing in 2025? “There’s a lot of things that have to be figured out.”ĭumbacher, who warned Congress this spring that NASA’s “piecemeal, uncoordinated approach is doomed to failure,” is among a number of agency insiders, veterans and oversight authorities who are sounding the alarm ahead of the maiden launch of the Space Launch System, the biggest rocket ever built, and the Orion capsule that are set to blast off in late August.Ĭongress this month passed a NASA policy bill, the first in five years, that requires the agency to swiftly set up a dedicated Artemis program office to manage a host of increasingly complex programs.
“I keep seeing the pieces of the puzzle but we’re struggling with how the pieces of the puzzle are actually going to fit together and work together,” said Dan Dumbacher, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the former head of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission. What comes next, however, seems more like science-fiction to many insiders than a solid plan, given the countless systems in various stages of development for NASA and at private space companies - from spacecraft to space suits - that will all have to come together to pull the missions off successfully and safely.Īnd only now is NASA rushing to create a single management structure to handle it all.
The NASA Artemis rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is pictured at the Kennedy Space Center.
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