By 2025, NASA will spend $93 billion on the Artemis lunar program. A similar forecast is contained in the report of the Inspector General of the American Space Agency, Paul Martin, reports Space.com .
In particular, the document claims that the production and launch of one bundle of the superheavy Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft will cost taxpayers $ 4.1 billion.
The publication notes that the estimate of $ 93 billion covers the period of work carried out from 2012 to 2025 fiscal year. For comparison, from 1960 to 1973, the United States spent 280 billion dollars on the Apollo program (at the current exchange rate).
The document also notes that the Americans' landing on the moon's surface planned for 2024 may be postponed for several years, due to the unavailability of spacesuits and the Human Landing System (HLS) landing system.
In October, NASA set February 12, 2022 as the closest launch date for SLS with Orion to the moon. As part of the Artemis 1 unmanned mission, the spacecraft must fly around the Earth's natural satellite. Depending on the relative position of the Moon and the Earth at the time of the rocket launch, the duration of the mission will be from three to six weeks.
In July 2019, Mike Pence, holding the position of Vice President of the United States, said that the American lunar program involves the constant presence of astronauts on a natural satellite of the Earth. At the same time, NASA reported that the reusable Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 1 lunar mission is ready.
Ivan Potapov
