NASA Ignition-NASA is advancing its lunar exploration program

NASA has achieved the near impossible.

We set foot on the moon, landed rovers

on Mars, launched telescopes to unlock

the secrets of the universe, and began

decades of continuous human 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 bring the best and brightest

from across the nation, the capabilities

from industry and our partners from all

over the world, and choose to undertake

and achieve the near impossible. And

that's exactly what this moment demands

of us once again. President Donald

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 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, 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 partners and the greater

spaceloving community. Ignition is about

more than setting direction. It's about

undertaking grand 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, 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 of the Exploration

Systems Development Mission Directorate,

Dr. Dr. Lorie 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 Aremis 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 crude

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 six

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 entrance 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 step-wise

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

step-wise 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 crude 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

trans lunar injection. Artemis 3 is now

being replanned as an Earth orbit test

flight demonstrating integrated launches

with rendevous and docking

demonstrations with one or both of the

lander providers.

Artemis 4 will pro will perform the

first crude 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 1 for a few weeks

now. And then the last couple days it

came I just kind of came to my mind

that's one week from tomorrow.

>> One week. Yes.

I can tell you I was just out at the pad

uh last Friday as we rolled the

spacecraft back out to the pad. Um 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. Um we'll

also be staying alert for anything that

may go a little astray. We want to

assure that um our astronauts, our three

American and Canadian crew are all safe

uh for this for this mission. We've

already passed our u final big review,

the flight readiness review uh 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 uh about four attempts

possible within that six 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 in 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 uh regress