HOUSTON, TX—NASA will give an update early next month on the timing of its upcoming missions to return humans to the Moon, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Wednesday at Payload’s Off World.
“There’s a lot of ingredients—so many ingredients—that need to come together for that landing, and we owe everybody an update,” he said. “There’s going to be an Artemis acceleration update…sometime in early October. Maybe it might even coincide with the [ISS] Crew 13 launch.”
Here are some of our other top takeaways from his remarks:
Race to the top: NASA can thank China for the urgency that’s surrounded its lunar goals this year, Isaacman said. But, while both nations are investing in building lunar infrastructure on an aggressive timeline, what does winning that race look like?
For Isaacman, it’s the flag on the suit of the next person to step foot on the Moon.
“The end state of who’s got the base operational first, and who can actually get to what permanently shaded regions, and whose technology gets demonstrated on the Moon…it plays out long before that,” he said. “You come up short with who comes down the ladder first, the impact is felt around the world.”
Luck of the draw: Isaacman is measuring NASA’s success for the remaining two years of the Trump administration by culture change, not mission milestones. Whether or not he is able to drive NASA to establish a Moon base while leading the agency is “luck,” he said—not the product of his personal leadership, but more a matter of the right policy, Congressional support, budget, and flexibility coming together at the right time.
Isaacman is measuring NASA’s accomplishments by two things he believes he can control:
- Focusing NASA’s time and resources on tackling a few “near impossible” missions.
- Giving the workforce the flexibility to work on things no one else is doing.
Make it happen: 2026 has been a big year of change for the space industry. Isaacman said 2027 is the year of execution, and that industry shouldn’t expect any other major pivots.
The only NASA focus that he said could see significant changes next year is the aeronautics portfolio. “There’s work to be done there to bring us back to our glory days,” he said.
Lightning round: Isaacman also discussed humans living continuously on the Moon, whether NASA will still be sending astronauts to LEO in 20 years, and why he wouldn’t say he’s disrupting the space agency. Stay tuned for a full transcript of our interview coming out soon…
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