Artemis

South Korea signed the Artemis Accords on 2021-05-27, becoming the 10th signatory to the pact governing norms of behavior for participants in the NASA-led Artemis lunar exploration program.

Australia’s lunar exploration initiative stems from a September 2019 agreement with NASA in which Australia committed AUD 150 million to participate in Artemis.

ARTEMIS integrates Hexagon US Federal’s Google Earth Enterprise Platform (GEEP) equipped laptops with custom globes built from satellite imagery and geospatial intelligence.

NASA awarded contracts to teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace on 2022-06-01 to develop new spacesuits for International Space Station spacewalks and Artemis lunar landing missions through the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) program.

NASA’s budget proposal for 2023 is $26,000,000,000 and includes provisions to establish a steady and resilient cadence for Artemis missions.

NASA selected Axiom Space in September for the first task order to develop spacesuits for Artemis missions in an award valued at $228,500,000.

NASA awarded a task order to Axiom Space on 2022-09-07 for development of spacesuits for Artemis missions.

Under OPOC, Lockheed Martin and NASA reduced Orion costs by 50% per vehicle for Artemis III through Artemis V compared to vehicles built during the design and development phase.

NASA had signed 54 Artemis-related agreements with other space agencies and governments as of October 2022.

Intuitive Machines worked with NASA to identify a new IM-1 landing site to support the Artemis lunar exploration campaign.

JAXA selected two astronaut candidates on 2023-02-28 to support the NASA-led Artemis lunar exploration program.

NASA estimated that a 22% budget cut from 2023 levels would delay or cancel several science missions including Mars Sample Return and the Earth System Observatory, defer lunar missions beyond Artemis 4, and result in layoffs of 4,000 personnel.

NASA has not established cost and schedule baselines for subsequent Artemis missions and has not developed a total lifecycle cost estimate for SLS, a concern the GAO raised in 2017.

The GAO recommended in 2014 that NASA establish cost and schedule baselines for subsequent Artemis missions that would use the Block 1 version of SLS.

Blue Origin received a $3,400,000,000 NASA award on 2023-05-19 to develop a second lunar lander for the Artemis lunar exploration campaign.

NASA previously awarded Axiom Space a task order in September 2022 to develop an Artemis spacesuit valued at $228,500,000.

Zeno Power Systems of Washington received $15,000,000 from NASA to develop a universal Americium-241 radioisotope power supply for Artemis.

Rhea Space Activity’s JAM modules will be flown in conjunction with ispace-U.S.’s contribution to the Draper-led Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative to deliver Artemis science investigations to the far side of the Moon in 2026.

The Blue Moon 2023-03-01 mockup is intended to test technologies for a crewed version Blue Origin is developing for NASA’s Artemis effort.

SpaceX has awards valued at $4,000,000,000 from NASA to develop a lunar lander version of Starship for the Artemis lunar exploration campaign, including crewed landings on Artemis 3 and Artemis 4.