NASA’s planned Artemis mission to the Moon in 2024 looks increasingly in doubt as the agency faces severe funding cuts from US lawmakers
The proposal faces a 58 percent funding shortfall in the bill that has this week passed through the US House of Representatives, bringing the hopes of a return mission that soon into doubt.
Crucially, the requested budget for the development of a lander which was $1.4 billion has been slashed to just $600million complicating plans for a 2024 landing – an idea first proposed by Vice President Mike Pence. The budget as a whole stressed a different set of priorities for the agency.
Speaking in testimony to Congress this summer, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine did stress that not receiving the funding for the lander would devastate the Artemis mission which was set to land the first woman on the Moon.
“It’s not dead, but it is in critical condition,” space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University told BuzzFeed News.
“You can’t land on the Moon without a lander.”
Support from US President Donald Trump seems increasingly fair-weather as he undercut his previous enthusiastic statements with a tweet in June complaining about the cost.
He said: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago.
“They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defence and Science!”
This loss of support may be the reason behind the more restrictive budget.
As it stands, the budget still needs to gain senate approval and the agency is only able to spend 40 percent of its allotted budget until it submits a detailed report on all of Artemis’ expenses by February
The new budget represents a 5.3 percent increase for the agency but requires NASA to rely on a very expensive Space Launch System rocket costing more than $2billion (£) per launch, to build a planned orbiting “Gateway” station in lunar orbit.
Commercial options preferred in earlier plans would be much cheaper and allow for more funding allocation elsewhere.
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