Holy smokes. Reading the tea leaves here, as a longtime reporter on NASA's Artemis program: Jim Free leaving implies major changes to Artemis. This many leaders from NASA Marshall in Alabama leaving also bodes ill for the Space Launch System rocket, whose design and construction Marshall oversaw. - ThreadSky

michaelgreshko.bsky.social • 2 days ago

Holy smokes. Reading the tea leaves here, as a longtime reporter on NASA's Artemis program: Jim Free leaving implies major changes to Artemis. This many leaders from NASA Marshall in Alabama leaving also bodes ill for the Space Launch System rocket, whose design and construction Marshall oversaw.

Reposted from Joey Roulette

NASA's Jim Free, a key official who has defended the agency's moon program, is leaving NASA on Saturday, and the CFO, CIO and top procurement official at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center had their retirements announced internally yesterday. www.reuters.com/world/us/key...

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michaelgreshko.bsky.social•2 days ago

There are two possible routes of change, based on my and others' reporting:
1. Postpone major changes until Artemis IV. There's a crewed lunar flyby (Artemis 2) and crewed landing (Artemis 3) already planned and contracted (w Musk's SpaceX). Canceling the SLS rocket now would upend these missions.

michaelgreshko.bsky.social•2 days ago

Artemis IV as originally conceived involves two new things:
- An upgraded upper stage of SLS
- Work on the Lunar Gateway, a small lunar space station already being built on Earth.
The more limited change is to rethink/nix Gateway, nix SLS 1B, and open up future Artemis launches to non-SLS rockets.

michaelgreshko.bsky.social•2 days ago

The more extreme change is to cancel SLS and the Orion spacecraft it launches ASAP and to immediately pivot Artemis to launching on SpaceX's Starship rocket, the only close-to-done alternative to launching NASA astronauts toward the moon.

michaelgreshko.bsky.social•2 days ago

The crew for Artemis 2, the crewed lunar flyby à la Apollo 8, has been training for nearly 2 years on Orion, and Starship has a ways to go before it will be rated for humans to get on board.

A caveat to all of this: NASA needs Congress to sign off. And Congress has been a HUGE fan of SLS/Orion.

michaelgreshko.bsky.social•2 days ago

NASA cannot pursue major architectural changes to Artemis without Congress's assent. Indeed, Artemis was designed as it was because NASA was working within the confines of what Congress wanted to fund: namely, SLS and Orion.

michaelgreshko.bsky.social•2 days ago

If the Trump Admin successfully gets Congress to upend the prevailing Artemis strategy, it'll mark a huge change in the politics around the hardware of human spaceflight, which to date has prioritized maintaining geographically diverse—& politically beneficial—aerospace jobs & supply chains.

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