During a House Science, Space & Technology Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) questioned NASA Administrator Bill Nelson about the Artemis program.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Congressman, thank you. And Mr. Chairman, if I may, another example of the deep space
00:07 communications that we just reestablished with Voyager 1, which is outside of our solar
00:14 system, approaching interstellar space, and it came back to life. And lo and behold, we
00:24 got it. And where it's located, so far away at the speed of light, the transmission takes
00:31 22 hours. And we just reestablished that. What, if you don't mind my asking, Mr. Administrator,
00:38 what caused that to come back into force? Again, these wizards, they do all kinds of
00:45 things. And this is a spacecraft, it's a very old spacecraft, Voyager 1. I think it was
00:51 launched back in the '70s. And so it is still perking.
00:57 Wow. OK. Thank you. That's great information to know. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Frost,
01:06 five minutes.
01:07 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And good afternoon, Administrator Nelson. With the goals of returning
01:12 Americans to the moon and aiming for Mars, the Artemis program has private partners in
01:17 all 50 states and over two dozen in Florida's 10th congressional district, which is my district.
01:23 Artemis is a significant contributor to NASA's $4.7 billion economic impact on central Florida
01:30 alone, and has partnered with the University of Central Florida, Go Knights, on several
01:34 research projects to support lunar landing and living. This is why my colleague, Congressman
01:39 Posey, and I are leading a bipartisan letter to the CJS Appropriations Subcommittee calling
01:43 for additional Artemis funding to overcome delays and technical complications.
01:48 Mr. Administrator, with all the challenges of such a complex and cutting-edge program,
01:53 what can NASA do to minimize further delays in the Artemis mission cadence?
01:57 Well, first of all, we can have congressmen like you that help us make an additional request.
02:09 And that we're not going to launch until it's ready. And that is because safety is our first
02:17 – when we put humans on an explosive bomb called a rocket, we're going to do everything
02:26 possible to make sure it's as safe as possible, realizing that everything is cutting the edge
02:36 of the envelope that we do. But especially when humans are in the loop, we're going
02:42 to make it that much more safe.
02:47 So we're on schedule next year to have four astronauts circle the moon and check out the
02:57 Artemis spacecraft. We are under contract with SpaceX for September of '26 to have
03:07 a lander of which we would go into lunar orbit and they would transfer in and go down to
03:14 the surface for six days. Obviously, if that lander's not ready, we're not going to
03:22 fly at that time. But that is the schedule and that's what the contract calls for.
03:30 Thank you. And the most recent success in the partnership of NASA and private space
03:34 industry was a soft landing on the moon's south pole as part of the Commercial Lunar
03:39 Payload Services Program. How does the work of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program
03:45 complement the work of the Artemis Program?
03:48 They are scouts for us, just like sending scouts out into the wilderness. So, for example,
03:57 one of them that is going on intuitive machines at the end of the year is going to start digging
04:04 in the south pole to see if there is water underneath the surface. If there's water
04:10 and it's in enough abundance, then we have rocket fuel.
04:16 And overall, what can we as members of Congress do to support the nationwide economic and
04:21 scientific impact of NASA's work, especially when it comes to the Artemis Program? I mean,
04:25 we know that I think any day now China will be sending – will do the first mission to
04:30 bring back things from the far side of the moon. We know this is – funding these programs
04:36 runs the best – in the best interest of our national security and the work that we
04:40 do. But what can we as members of Congress do?
04:43 There's the old saying, "The President proposes and the Congress disposes." You're
04:50 in – you're our partner. You make it possible for authorizing us to do this stuff and then
05:00 appropriating the means by which to do it.
05:04 And lastly, can you briefly describe some of the scientific highlights of the commercial
05:10 missions in terms of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program?
05:13 Oh, yes, sir. For example, this last one, it was an intuitive machine. It caught its
05:24 leg on a rock as it was coming down and it tipped over. The fact that it tipped over,
05:35 it didn't have its antenna pointing in the right direction to receive. But we – it
05:42 was still faint enough that we could get enough to know that it was alive. There were six
05:48 NASA experiments on board.
05:51 Now this is an incredible story of the chairman of the full committee, Hal Rogers, in his
05:58 district as a university, Morgan State. They have big dishes that can support the commercial
06:07 program. But in this case, the CLPS, the CLPS wasn't able to communicate. They didn't
06:20 have enough power from their commercial communications. But Morgan State was uniquely positioned that
06:31 it could also communicate with our government deep space communications that had the power
06:40 in order to receive that weak signal. And therefore, most of the objectives of the mission
06:49 were successful with a connection there made through Morgan State. That is an example of
06:59 a daring do that suddenly the NASA scientists and the commercial community and a university
07:06 were able to figure out real time.
07:08 Well, thank you so much for your time, Mr. Administrator, and I yield back.