It is widely expected that the 2024 target, which was four years earlier than originally planned, would be impossible to achieve as a new rocket, capsule, lunar lander and other components have yet to be developed and fully tested.
But Jurczyk’s comments Tuesday are the first public acknowledgment by the space agency that the aggressive timeline, which former vice president Mike Pence announced in 2019, is in jeopardy.
A major obstacle is simply funding a project that is estimated to cost $ 30 billion.
Congress has allocated more than $ 23 billion to NASA in the omnibus fiscal bill for 2021. That included about $ 850 million to start buying a lunar lander, much less than the $ 3.3 billion requested by NASA.
The NASA Inspector General also released a report in November in which the landing of astronauts on the moon by 2024 was the biggest challenge facing the agency. And another IG report also released in the month found that the Gateway, a small habitat that orbits the moon and is designed to facilitate lunar transmissions, is unlikely to be ready by 2024.
Jurczyk, who worked at NASA for three decades before being used to run the agency until President Joe Biden appointed a permanent administrator, said the agency was now awaiting feedback from the White House Office of Management and Budget on NASA’s budget proposal for 2022 in the budget, which was produced under the Trump administration.
This will give an early indication of the new government’s intentions for the space agency and help determine if the lunar objective is still possible.
NASA officials are also reviewing space company proposals to build a landing system to bring humans to the lunar surface.
Jurczyk said NASA could then determine what level of funding it needs to meet by the 2024 deadline, or if it is too ambitious, the earliest that it can send astronauts safely to the moon.
Under the current plan, Artemis I, without crew, is expected to launch in 2021, followed by Artemis II, which would fly astronauts past the moon in 2023. Artemis III, currently set for 2024, will land a crew on the moon.
The Trump administration tried to make the deadline a reality, despite the fact that many people in the space community said it was not technically possible and that Democrats criticized it as a political ploy to end of the second Trump term would happen if he were re-elected.
Recently in December, former NASA chief Jim Bridenstine was unwilling to return from the 2024 deadline. But he also acknowledged that the Artemis program “must go back to the drawing board” without the necessary funding.