Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket

Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage

Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage

Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit

Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission

NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028

NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

The openness with which this was presented has been so refreshing.

I have a feeling this is more about the launch than the meeting, which is fine. Personally I think that having relations with the Russians is a waste of time.

He basically says, “I’m happy to be here again, smelling the unmistakable scent of the ISS.” Must be some cosmonaut inside joke?

Again lol

Tough start to the year

Possibly just for bearing repairs, but we’ll see.

16 to 18 Vulcan flights

Idk man…

https://bsky.app/profile/nasaspaceflight.com/post/3medwvncysk2b

Another one

https://bsky.app/profile/nasaspaceflight.com/post/3mebbxkzz2227

So far so good…

What a boondoggle

Honestly can’t wait to see what the Chinese do. They move fast and I’m excited to see how they transform the industry.

The arcane approval process has consequences. Before this decision, the newest camera slated to fly on the historic Artemis II mission around the Moon was a 2016 Nikon DSLR, alongside GoPro cameras that were a decade old.

That’s crazy! So much talk about being on the bleeding edge and then this. Glad administrator Isaacman is pushing for change.

It will be fascinating to see what they come up with. $50 million for just the upper stage is so expensive compared to Falcon 9. According to the numbers in the article, SpaceX can launch 3 Falcon 9s for the price of that one upper stage.

Wow that was fast.

A while back I was getting concerned that upper stage issues were getting more frequent, I’m happy to have been wrong. It seems like (I hope) this is just a byproduct of the sheer number of launches they do. I hope we’ll get word of their investigation findings soon.

It also makes me look forward to Starship even more, with its multiple engines for redundancy. Not to mention leaving that upper stage in orbit won’t be an option at all.

I wasn’t expecting this. Looks like Blue is refocusing

Jesus Christ

That’s pretty remarkable. Hope it goes well.

It’s actually pretty well understood that a starlink satellite’s life span is approx. 5 years at which point it is intentionally deorbited, and any malfunctioning satellite’s orbit would naturally decay within a few years as well.

That being said, I agree that there should be regulations about this. Feels like we’re in a bit of a wild west situation.

It’s going to take a lot to change the agency culture, but I’m glad Jared seems to be taking the right steps.