Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy wants to make Artemis a household name.
In an exclusive interview to USA Today, Duffy talked about the need to do a better job in giving purpose to NASA and its missions—and communicating that to the American public. A key part of that, he said, is giving Artemis the Apollo treatment.
“I want to be able to run into a Walmart in Middle America and ask a customer, ‘What’s NASA up to?’ and hear them tell me about Artemis,” he said.
Big and beautiful: Duffy took the first steps toward that goal in this interview, by selling Artemis as a “daring, technically challenging and collaborative international endeavor” to send astronauts to the lunar south pole. The first lunar landing will come after Artemis II’s crew goes around the Moon, expected sometime next year.
The program will prospect for ice that could both unlock mining opportunities, and answer questions about the history of our solar system.
Duffy also drove home the idea that Artemis is more than flags and footprints.
“It’s about getting us farther into the unknown than we’ve ever gone before, and equipping our agency with the tools to pursue Manifest Destiny into the stars,” he said.
And yet…The agency pursuing a permanent lunar settlement is facing some of the largest budget cuts in its history, which overwhelmingly target science missions. NASA is also contending with a shrinking workforce, as thousands opted to leave the agency under the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program.
Duffy countered that the cuts and workforce reductions will result in a “leaner, more agile” NASA that still has enough funding to accomplish what he sees as its core mission: space exploration.
