WASHINGTON, FEB 21 (AFP/APP/DNA):Is NASA still Moonbound, or will the next giant leap mean skipping straight to Mars?
Speculation is mounting that the Trump administration may scale back or cancel NASA’s Artemis missions following the departure of a key official and Boeing’s plans to lay off hundreds of employees working on its lunar rocket.
Late Wednesday, NASA abruptly announced the retirement of longtime associate administrator Jim Free, effective Saturday.
No reason was given for Free’s departure after his 30-year rise to NASA’s top civil-service position. However, he was a strong advocate for Artemis, which aims to return crews to the Moon, establish a sustained presence, and use that experience to prepare for a Mars mission.
Though Artemis was conceived in President Donald Trump’s first term, he has openly mused about bypassing the Moon and heading straight to Mars — a notion gaining traction as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and SpaceX’s owner, becomes a key ally and advisor.
Musk’s SpaceX, founded to make humanity a multiplanetary species, is betting heavily on its prototype Starship rocket for a future Mars mission.
Trump has also tapped private astronaut and e-payments billionaire Jared Isaacman, a close Musk ally who has flown to space twice with SpaceX, as his next NASA chief.
Boeing this month told employees it could 400 jobs from the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket program to “align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectation.”
“This will require 60-day notices of involuntary layoff be issued to impacted employees in coming weeks, in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act,” the aerospace giant told AFP.
Boeing “saw the writing on the wall,” Keith Cowing, a former NASA scientist and founder of NASA Watch, told AFP.
To date, SLS has flown just one mission — 2022’s uncrewed Artemis 1 — and has proven exceedingly costly. It’s “likely to fly only one or two missions, or they’ll cancel it outright,” Cowing added.
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