Mission to Mars

SPACE — In preparation for the enhanced Artemis 2 mission, the United States Agency (NASA) has established a new office. The office is a congressional mandate tasked with overseeing planning for the Artemis 2 mission and future missions to the moon.

NASA announced on March 30, 2023 that it has established a Moon to Mars Program Office within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. The office will focus on integrating various ongoing exploration campaign programs. Among these, Artemis’ lunar exploration, from Orion and the Space Launch System to the Gateway, lunar landers and spacesuits. For your information, the Gateway is a transit station that orbits the moon, before the spacecraft lands on the lunar surface.

Congress directed NASA to set up the office in a NASA authorization passed last year as part of the CHIPS and Science Act. It stemmed from concerns in Congress and NASA advisers that no one person was overseeing all of the Artemis mission support programs.

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The office is headed by Amit Kshatriya, who was previously deputy associate administrator for general exploration systems development. “It’s important to know what it is and what it isn’t,” Khasatriya said of his new position, in an interview at the Johnson Space Center on April 3, 2023.

Managers of these various programs, he said, are still doing the same job. “This is mainly the realignment of roles and responsibilities at the head office,” he said.

That work was already underway before the passing of the authorization statute to ensure consistent integration among NASA’s programs. “What we want to achieve is speed up the reorganization of headquarters a bit and eliminate some of the duplication of effort in certain areas.”

NASA’s associate administrator for exploratory systems development, Jim Free said, what they will probably do now is have a single point of focus on NASA’s short-term mission concerns. “I’m really trying to focus the office, that your job is to do (Artemis) 2 to 5,” he said. If Artemis 2 and 3 will explore the moon, Artemis 5 is an attempt to explore the planet Mars.

That role, Free said, had been his responsibility before the new office was established. “I think that gives us a point that everyone can go to. He (the new head of office) can track and worry about the mission every day,” he said.

Kshatriya says his focus is first and foremost on Artemis 2. “There are lessons from Artemis 1 that we have to make sure to incorporate,” he says. Then, the completion of the propulsion vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion space capsule, as well as the work on the ground systems required for the mission.

“The next mission is 100 per cent my priority, to make sure that no realignment is made that impacts that (mission),” he said.

However, part of a new office job is looking forward. One of the tasks assigned to the Moon to Mars office is ensuring the technological developments and mission modes selected are commensurate with the potential for future Mars-level activity. That ranges from testing closed-loop life support systems to developing the Gateway.

“We have done that in every investment made. The way we implement what Congress is asking for, I think it’s going to be very good,” Free said. Source: Space.com