KENNEDY SPACE CENTER -- There's a sense of urgency among NASA and its partners aiming for the first human spaceflight of the Artemis program.
Artemis II is slated to launch four astronauts on an 10-day trip to the moon by April 2026. But with President Trump and his adviser and SpaceX founder Elon Musk beating the drum for Mars, the Artemis schedule suddenly seems slow, and the program's expense great.
And the future of the country's first crewed moon mission in more than 50 years may hang in the balance.
"Every day we are pushing, and not only days, we're pushing hours and minutes," said Lockheed Martin's Kent Shireman, head of its Orion spacecraft program, at an Artemis media event Friday. "If we can get ahead a minute, it's precious. Absolutely. 24/7 we're on every day."
It all adds up to the potential for big changes for the decades-old, multi-billion-dollar Artemis program as it seeks the blessing of a new presidential administration. While pressing for an earlier launch date could help in the short-term, bigger changes may come down the road: ditching the costly Space Launch System rocket, which is not reusable, and pitching the Orion capsule as a candidate for Mars travel in addition to its moon duties.
All of this and more may be needed if the program, parts of which have been in the work since the mid-2000s, is to survive Trump administration budget choppers and Mars-or-bust enthusiasts.
For now speed is the obsession for the partners involved in the launch -- including main contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman, working on the SLS rocket, and NASA's Exploration Ground Systems at KSC working to stack the SLS and Orion at the Vehicle Assembly Building and roll it out to Launch Pad 39-B.
"We've been looking at multiple opportunities on how we can do a little bit quicker on the schedule, expedite certain areas, move the schedule pieces around to support an earlier than April launch date," said NASA's Elkin Norena the SLS rocket resident manager at the space center.
They hope to buy back several months for a mission that has already been delayed years by NASA, as delays plaguing the uncrewed Artemis I mission created a domino effect. While its 2022 launch initially looked like a big success, it actually gave NASA some big-ticket headaches to solve before they could consider putting humans on the next flight.
Those humans are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hanson. Among their tasks is to prove Orion can protect them during intense flight conditions including a reentry that hits nearly 25,000 mph and temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The challenge of surviving those conditions led to NASA's last delay, pushing what had been a September 2024 target to the current April 2025 launch target. Orion's heat shield had suffered unexpected damage during the Artemis I reentry, missing fist-size chunks of its protective coating, and it took months to find a fix.
Now NASA is pushing to accelerate the timeline.
There are still a lot of parts in play. On Friday morning the core stage of the SLS rocket sat in one corner of the assembly building, but it is slated to shift to another corner before the end of the month to be mated with the two solid rocket boosters. Together they are designed to provide the 8.8 million pounds of thrust to propel Orion to deep-space destinations.
Orion itself is near completion at the nearby Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building. It's expected to move to the assembly building in late April or early May.
"We're working very hard to try to accelerate that schedule. Certainly, on Orion side, we're gonna be able to deliver," said NASA's Orion Project Manager Howard Hu.
Then the hope is to haul the fully assembled rocket and spacecraft to its launchpad by December, which could set things up for a quick turnaround and then liftoff.
Senior vehicle operations manager Cliff Lanham with NASA ground systems said the teams have addressed all the gremlins that popped up in the months before the launch of Artemis I, including leaks in the propellant lines that flowed into the rocket.
"We've looked at those challenges, and we feel we've taken care of them," he said.
Will even that be enough?
In his first term, President Trump was an Artemis supporter, trying to get its landing mission done by 2024.
But now, with Trump back in office, there are signals that the moon may become less of a priority.
"We are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond," Trump said at this week's joint session of the Congress.
That declaration drew a quick endorsement from the man slated to become the next NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman, who posted on X in response, "The next giant leap" with a meme of Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy giving approving head nods.
Current NASA leadership still has eyes for the moon, though. Acting Administrator Janet Petro has been pitching the moon's benefits, through a potentially Trump-pleasing nationalist lens, during recent press conferences about commercial lunar landers.
"I think this administration really wants to keep America first, and I think the way that we keep America first is by dominating in all the domains of space," she said, including "the surface of the moon and around the moon. So as long as we keep dominating that space, I think we're going to be putting America first. We're going to make America proud. We're doing this for the U.S. citizens."
That doesn't mean there won't be changes.
Already there have been signs the SLS rocket, could be cut out of the Artemis program. Boeing signaled earlier this year it was prepared to lay off as many as 400 employees who work on SLS depending on decisions made by the administration.
Recent testimony during congressional hearings suggested NASA could opt to drop SLS after Artemis III in favor of commercial heavy-lift rockets such as Blue Origin's New Glenn or SpaceX's Starship, which would be cheaper, faster options.
SLS rockets are single-use vehicles that in their current configuration can be readied for launch only about once a year. They have already cost the nation nearly $24 billion to develop, with future SLS rockets coming in at about $2.5 billion a pop.
Orion, though, which is built primarily by Lockheed Martin, may be able to pivot to Mars duty.
"Mars is, I'll say, in the picture. Orion was intended to support crews coming home from the moon, and ultimately crews coming home from the Mars," said Shireman. "I think Orion could serve that purpose, absolutely."
And while it's designed to go on the top of the SLS for now, it could shift to another rocket, he said.
"Orion's a spacecraft, right? You could call it a payload. So yes, ultimately you need something to throw it with a certain velocity out into space. So yes, it could be modified to go fly on on other vehicles," he said.
That said, he's a big proponent to sticking to the plan. Orion faced years of delays when NASA's Constellation program was canceled, before finding resurrection as part of Artemis.
"I just don't think the best course for our country is to go change courses right now," he said. "We ought to go continue on with the hardware we have here and and make it happen. We're right on the cusp. Let's go."