If you feel like NASA's been in limbo lately, you're not alone.

"NASA has been kind of stuck for much of the last decade," says Jack Burns, who serves as a member of President Trump's NASA transition team. "After the shuttle stopped flying, people were even confused as to whether NASA existed any longer—I mean it was that bad."

On a recent visit to the University of Colorado at Boulder where Burns teaches and works, Popular Mechanics sat down with the astrophysics professor to learn a little about what we can expect from NASA in the coming years. Up first: flying people to space again. American astronauts haven't flown to orbit on an American launch vehicle since the last Space Shuttle flight in July 2011. Since then, NASA astronauts have been hitching rides on the Russian Soyuz rocket, and the U.S. has been paying for the privilege. The new NASA wants to change that.

A New Rocket and a New Spacecraft

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NASA

The Space Launch System (SLS) is now NASA's flagship rocket project, and the Orion spacecraft the agency's primary vehicle for both astronauts and cargo. The new spaceflight vehicles have been a long time coming. Development of the SLS began back in 2011, but the story goes back even further, to the administration of George W. Bush.

The Constellation program, which gave birth to these technologies, dates to the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The law directed NASA to pursue a sustained human presence on the moon as a precursor to going to Mars. The two primary rockets Constellation envisioned for these missions were the Ares I for crewed launches and the larger Ares V for cargo. Both were designed to use technology developed in the Space Shuttle program, including its main engine, the Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25.

But it was not to be. A review by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) concluded that the Constellation program was so far behind schedule, over budget, and underfunded that Ares I would not fly until 2017-2019 and Ares V would not fly until the late 2020s. Obama cancelled the Constellation program by signing the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. However, that legislation actually increased total funding for NASA, and rather than abandoning a manned American spaceflight program, it created the Space Launch System out of the ashes of the Ares rockets.

They even look the same.

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NASA
Top: Saturn V, Space Shuttle, and the three planned Ares rockets. Ares IV was designed to combine the upper stage of Ares I with the lower stage of Ares V, providing a rocket that could launch astronauts on missions to distant locations. Bottom: The main varients of the Space Launch System.

In a space policy speech at Kennedy Space Center on April 14, 2010 Obama said:

In developing this new vehicle, we will not only look at revising or modifying older models; we want to look at new designs, new materials, new technologies that will transform not just where we can go but what we can do when we get there. And we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it.

Now that enormous bird is almost ready to fly. The spacecraft designed to ride on top of the SLS is the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), which was developed from the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle of the Constellation program. Built primarily by Lockheed Martin and Airbus Defence and Space, Orion will carry a crew of four to low Earth orbit (LEO) or beyond. The craft launched on its first test in December 2014, when a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy carried it to high Earth orbit.

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NASA
Engineers at NASA\'s Langley Research Center conducting Orion crew capsule drop tests in April 2016 to learn how to protect astronauts who will one day land in the ocean after deep-space missions.

In the past few months, NASA has been test-firing the SLS's RS-25 rocket engines, finished welding the core stage liquid hydrogen fuel tank, and started sending rocket components to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for final testing before being moved to nearby Kennedy Space Center, where the mammoth rocket will launch.

Now, the SLS program hasn't been without its own controversies related to the expense—a single launch of the enormous rocket will cost some $500 million. (A SpaceX Falcon 9 launch starts at $62 million, but can only lift about 18 percent of the mass as the SLS.) Accordingly, NASA will continue to rely on support from companies like SpaceX and ULA for smaller payloads and shorter missions.

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NASA
An artist\'s rendering of the Orion spacecraft in flight.

The agency is on track to launch an unmanned test flight of the SLS and Orion spacecraft in 2018. But things changed recently when President Trump's NASA transition team announced it wanted to consider flying astronauts on the maiden flight. NASA and Lockheed are currently conducting a feasibility study to determine if they can safely upgrade the first SLS flight to a crewed mission.

According to Burns:

The question we [the NASA transition team] asked is, "can we get a jump start?" We've got this magnificent new rocket, the SLS and Orion. Is there really any barrier for flying a human crew on the first mission, because after all the first flight of the shuttle had a crew. ... So we asked the question and what came back was, 'it's certainly possible.' After discussing it and getting that reaction, both from industry and from NASA, we recommended it as part of our plan that actually went up to the White House and to the vice president's office. They both came back very enthusiastic and said, "yeah, let's do a study on this, and let's do it quickly."

Launching a crew of astronauts on the first SLS flight will require some upgrades to the rocket. Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) was originally going to launch on the smallest variant of the SLS, Block 1, but a crewed flight would require Block 1B, which uses a more powerful second stage called the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS). The Orion spacecraft will need some upgrades to add life support and monitoring systems as well.

As a result, the NASA transition team imagines a crewed EM-1 launch in 2019 rather than next year. That said, the first crewed flight of SLS was initially slated for 2021, so making EM-1 a crewed mission would significantly speed up the timeline. The 2019 launch, which would likely fly astronauts around the far side of the moon and back to Earth in a mission similar to Apollo 8, would pave the way for ambitious future projects—like putting a permanent space habitat in orbit around the moon.

A Permanent Presence at the Moon

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Lockheed Martin
Concept of a space habitat orbiting the moon.

"NASA itself and we would like to see a habitat put up there sooner rather than later," Burns says. "It's basically one of the space station modules, maybe a couple of them put together, not this big enormous thing like the space station."

Is NASA finally on the homestretch to building a moon station, which has been a goal of the agency, officially or unofficially, for decades? It's feasible that an orbiting habitat is established at the moon by the end of the 2020s, one that could house astronauts for months at a time. NASA sometimes calls this the "Deep Space Gateway" station, reiterating the point that the ultimate goal of the agency is manned flights to Mars. Lockheed Martin and other private aerospace companies are currently working on habitat designs to propose to NASA, and the SLS and Orion spacecraft would be perfect for taking the habitat, astronauts, and other necessary equipment to lunar orbit.

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NASA/MAF/Steven Seipel
The core stage liquid hydrogen tank for the SLS rocket, welded and completed at NASA\'s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in September 2016.

The potential uses for such a habitat are plentiful. Burns, who studies the cosmology of the early universe, would be interested in having astronauts in the habitat remotely control rovers on the lunar surface to build a radio telescope on the far side of the moon. NASA and partnering companies like Lockheed and Blue Origin could use the habitat as a jumping-off point to construct a base on the lunar surface.

"You could also dock a reusable lander there, so every time the crew comes in, you would have the option to go to the surface," says Burns. "One of the companies that came forward was Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, and he said, listen, we've got this New Shepard spacecraft that we've been testing and landing, and we think we can adapt that to the lunar surface."

Achieving all this means working with private space companies in a new way. For example, ULA (a Boeing-Lockheed alliance) held a workshop in February with NASA and industry officials to talk about developing the "cislunar marketplace" (cislunar referring to the space between Earth and the moon). Perhaps private space companies could learn how to harvest ice on the moon, manufacture rocket fuel with it, and set up refueling stations in orbit.

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Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow Aerospace\'s inflatable habitats. One is currently being tested on the International Space Station, and similar designs could be used in the future for orbiting habitats or surface habitats on the moon or Mars.

"Rocket fuel is very heavy," says Burns. "You don't want to take it off the Earth because it costs 10 times as much to take it off the Earth as it does to lift off the moon. So if you have the technology to develop this on the moon then store it in cislunar space with cryogenic tanks, then vehicles that are coming and going in the inner part of the solar system—going to asteroids, going to the moon, and going to Mars—will get their fuel from these cryogenic fuel depots."

There are huge technological barriers, of course, but the NASA transition team believes that private companies who see profit in such ventures could play a crucial role. And of course, developing the technology to launch an orbiting habitat to the moon and construct permanent structures on its surface would be a stepping stone to doing the same at the neighboring planet that has tantalized NASA for decades: Mars.

On to Mars

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Lockheed Martin
Concept of a habitat in orbit around Mars.

"We're going to do both"—that's what Burns says when you ask the moon vs. Mars question. "The realization that I had personally is that we can do both. I think many folks thought that you had to make a choice—that you had to do the moon first, develop it, and then that would lead to Mars. But with public-private partnerships you can be developing the moon... and still be working towards missions to Mars, because the private sector is going to be providing some of the resources to do that development because they do see business prospects there."

There is no doubt that the private space industry is becoming more robust year by year, particularly in the field of rocket development, and hopefully soon companies like SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin will have human-rated spaceflight vehicles of their own. However, the significant technological contribution of the private sector hinges directly on the companies' ability to make money. Burns warns that it may be a long time before things like cislunar refueling depots are actually viable, let alone profitable.

And there are more unsolved technological barriers to landing astronauts on Mars than people like to talk about—namely, actually landing a human-rated spacecraft on the planet. Landing on Mars is notoriously difficult. Of 16 attempted robotic spacecraft landings on the Red Planet since 1970, only 7 were successful, all conducted by NASA.

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SpaceX
A concept of the SpaceX Red Dragon capsule, which it hopes to launch to Mars around 2020.

A crewed mission would require a spacecraft of 10 to 15 metric tons, and nobody knows how to land something that heavy on Mars (for comparison, the Curiosity rover touched down at less than one metric ton). The atmospheric pressure on Mars is less than one percent of that on Earth. It's just enough that you need a heavy heat shield to survive descent, but not enough to sufficiently slow down a lander with a parachute alone. Some sort of retro-propulsion system will be required, and while companies like SpaceX are working on the problem, we won't know if they can pull it off until they successfully land on the Red Planet.

We also don't have the fuel. It's near impossible that a mission to Mars could carry extra fuel for a return flight, so we need another answer. If private space companies can develop fuel depots in cislunar space, it wouldn't be too difficult to launch additional fuel from the moon toward Mars, but it could be decades before that is a feasible solution. An easier (if less sustainable) option would be to launch the fuel separately for the return flight and have it waiting on the Martian surface. A third idea would use autonomous robots to mine water and convert it to fuel while monitored by astronauts in an orbiting Mars space station, but that plan is pretty ambitious.

A crewed flight to orbit Mars is one thing, and we could see it happen in the coming decades, as the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 aims for an orbital mission to Mars to launch in 2033. President Trump himself recently told Astronaut Peggy Whitson that he wants to send humans to Mars by the end of his second term, which would be 2024, "at worst."

As for landing, Burns says, "personally I think it's going to be a bit longer than the 2030s before we can land astronauts [on Mars] safely."

What About Earth?

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JAXA/NHK

Amidst all the exciting prospects from NASA to explore new worlds, there is concern in the Earth sciences community that our own planet will be getting short shrift. The Trump administration's preliminary budget report for 2018 can give us some insight into NASA's priorities moving forward, even as Congress has yet to approve an actual budget.

The report keeps total NASA funding about the same, with a 0.8 percent decrease, but reallocates funds to focus on space exploration and manned spaceflight while cutting some Earth-monitoring satellite programs. Once again, this is an area where Burns believes there is a profit incentive for private industry to take on much of the work.

"The idea is those partnerships [with private companies] assuming operational responsibilities for the missions and then NASA buying back data for research," says Burns. "The way it is right now, NASA is running some of these satellites and then selling the data to the commercial side. I mean, really, should NASA be in that business?"

Burns points to companies like DigitalGlobe, the biggest Earth-monitoring satellite company in the world, as an example of private industry's interest in acquiring Earth observation data from orbit. DigitalGlobe has operated 8 satellites, including the suite of four WorldView sats, and in 2014 the company's revenue topped out at over $650 million. Maybe these types of companies can expand to acquire the data NASA needs for scientific research as well. "What NASA should be doing is research," Burns says.

But relying on private industry to acquire data for NASA (and agencies like NOAA, NSF, and USGS) to research climate change, ocean currents, and weather patterns is a big risk. Once you put a dollar amount on the data, rather than the satellite, how much will NASA buy? Surely the agency will need to be involved in designing the scientific instruments they require. A partnership like this will be a new experiment in how NASA works.

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NASA/DSCOVR
A series of images taken by the DSCOVR spacecraft\'s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC). Under Trump\'s proposed NASA budget for 2018, DSCOVR will cease its Earth-observing observations and will only be used to monitor the sun for solar storms and other space weather.

It's a risky plan, but Burns says new leadership for NASA can make it happen. The new NASA administrator is likely to be announced this summer, and in addition, the Trump administration plans on reestablishing the National Space Council, which last existed under George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. This federal council will bring together all government agencies that have a vested interest in space—NASA, NOAA, NSF, USGS as well as the Department of Defense—to work together and work with private industry to make space operations more efficient across the board. In the eyes of the NASA transition team, the agency has become bloated, focused on too many things, and NASA should return to its primary functions: exploration and scientific research.

To that end, NASA is developing new spacecraft to launch astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972. It is planning new technologies for rocket fuel production, space infrastructure, and the ultimate establishment of permanent bases on other planets. NASA is reprioritizing, setting its sights high and counting on the assistance of a growing private space industry to help achieve lofty goals. It's simultaneously thrilling and terrifying, just like space exploration itself.

Headshot of Jay Bennett
Jay Bennett
Associate Editor


Jay Bennett is the associate editor of PopularMechanics.com. He has also written for Smithsonian, Popular Science and Outside Magazine.