The Artemis program to return humans to the Moon has an aura of inevitability now, with broad political support, robust international participation, and a successful first mission—Artemis I—under its belt.

Perhaps most critically, for Artemis, is that in a rare show of bipartisanship, both Republicans and Democrats support NASA's plan to send humans to the Moon later this decade, at least once a year, reaching a point at which astronauts stay for 30 days at a time. Crafted during the Trump administration, the Biden White House reaffirmed these Artemis plans within days of taking office. Biden diplomats have also continued to add nations to the "Artemis Accords," with two dozen countries now participating.

For all of this support, however, there is one worrying sign. The Artemis program's budget is ballooning, and it is unclear when people will start flying to the Moon. These concerns were highlighted this week at a meeting of NASA's Advisory Committee for Human Spaceflight.

Big budget request

The space agency's chief official for human spaceflight in deep space, Jim Free, discussed the budget from fiscal year 2024 through fiscal year 2028. During this five-year period, the space agency will spend at least $41.5 billion on the Artemis program, when there is likely to be a single human landing at most. This includes some staggering sums for the Space Launch System rocket, $11 billion, which has already been developed for this mission.

This $11 billion is approximately the same amount of money that NASA proposes spending on not one, but two lunar landers for humans, which are arguably as complex as the SLS rocket, which has been in development since 2011. NASA did not award its first lunar lander contract until 2021. It is not clear why NASA needs to spend as much money on a flight-proven rocket as it does on the development of two large and technically challenging human landers.

Asking during the meeting about the ongoing high costs for the SLS rocket, Free said the space agency was attempting to bring the costs down by shifting from development to operations.

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"We're trying to transition to the Exploration Production Operations Contract, and that's happening towards the end of this budget horizon where we're trying to get our dollars down," Free said. "So you won't see that necessarily captured in this line item. We're looking for more than a little bit to get the affordability."

NASA's budget also proposes to spend $4 billion for a Lunar Gateway that will not be used during the first lunar landing. While it may provide a nice way station capability, the Gateway is unnecessary for actual lunar landings.

During his presentation, Free warned that even with the president's budget proposal, there probably was not enough funding to carry out the Artemis program as conceived, which calls for an initial human landing in 2025 (which almost certainly will slip two or three years), and a follow-up landing in 2028 (again, slips are expected).

"A lot of the program managers are here in the room," he said of major components of the Artemis plan, including the SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft, and lunar lander. "And I'm sure they tell you, they need more than this to execute."

Congressional priorities

Free also said Congress' inability to pass a timely budget, and its reliance on continuing resolutions (CR), has made starting new programs to get the Artemis program moving difficult.

"That feels like the weight of the world on my shoulders, trying to get stability in Congress," Free said. "If we're trying to grow on budget to launch more stuff, and we're on a CR, it's our budget from last year, so we can't grow. We can't start new programs when on a CR, without an exception."

One of the major problems for Artemis, then, is that its budget is ballooning at a time when Republicans in Congress are seeking to pare back the federal budget, a debt-limit crisis is looming, and the cost of borrowing money is rising with each interest rate hike. At some point, does Artemis become a luxury rather than a necessity? The chair of the advisory committee, Wayne Hale, suggested as much as he spoke about Congress' need to meet multiple priorities.

"Ultimately, what kind of space program we have depends on what the American people want from their elected representatives," Hale said. "We as space aficionados here would like to have much more, but the use of taxpayers' money comes with priority setting, among all the different things the government has to do."