For joining us at space Kennedy Space center. I am the nasa press secretary and we are joined for an artemis ii update and our crew. We got a first look at the spacecraft that took them to the moon, we only have 45 minutes to for the briefing so we will keep it short. Joining us is nasa administrator bill nelson, pam melroy, bob cabana, jim free, artemis ii commander reese wiseman, Mission Specialist christina cook, and Mission Specialist jeremy hendrick. First i will handed over to the administrator for a quick update. Bill nelson thank you, jackie. The fact that the crew has seen their spacecraft now, this is another major step of us going back to the moon. Remember, we are going back to the moon, it is actually a different moon, we are to the south pole. We are going to see several spacecraft, some from other nations that are going to be landing on the south pole in the near future. Perhaps this year. There is a renewed interest in the moon. Of course, it is there because the potential of water. If there is water and enough in abundance, you have the potential for hydrogen and oxygen. It would fit in very nicely with why we are going back to the moon this time after halfcentury, we are going back to learn to live in a deep space environment for a long period of time so that we can go to mars and return safely. Along the way theyre going to be several scientific excitements, the development of new tools, the development of new implements. The development of new procedures, all of which is in this moon to mars program. That is the goal, we are going to venture out into the cosmos. They go back to the moon this time in a different way. We go back with commercial partners. We go back to the moon with international partners. You should have seen the reaction when reid brought the crew to ottawa and they were in front of the parliament, you should have seen jeremy in his 10 gallon hat at the largest rodeo in the world in calibri, calgary, alberta. There is an excitement i can tell you that is quite exceptional. As an international mission, you should see the fact that having just returned from south america three countries, brazil, argentina, and colombia, no hesitation about the president of those countries receiving our nasa delegation. Not only excitement, but enthusiasm of the president s that amazed our u. S. State Department Embassy staff. That accompanied us. There is this excitement in the International Community. And all along in the science we will discover, things just like i say about the james webb space telescope, we are going to answer questions that we do not even know what the questions are. I remember back on the 60th anniversary, they had me go to houston 60 years to the day and Rice University was having the celebration and it was in the same place that president kennedy had spoke to an audience in that stadium. This was a long time ago. He said he had already declared in a speech to the joint session of congress about a year earlier, in the meantime, john glenn had flown. We knew we were on our way and kennedy went there and he said we go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Space is hard. There are those discoveries in overcoming this very hard environment that are going to fill us and our nature as discoverers and as adventurers. That is why we are going back to the moon and then on to mars. Thank you. Jackie now deputy administrator. Is it on . Great. It is a thrill for bill and bob and i to be here with the artemis ii crew to see their hard flight hardware. It brings back happy memories for the three of us of seeing hours, but also a shiver down our spine as we step forward into the next chapter of our destiny in human spaceflight. We are going to stay as the administrator said. That is very important. And we have the hardware not just for artemis ii, but for flights through artemis six already in the works. That is significant. We have been spending a lot of time the last couple of years to really focus on what are the objectives that we need to prove on the moon, what exactly do we need to learn before we are ready to go to mars . This is a crucial first step along that way. One of our northstars is science. That is why we explore, to learn more about the universe, our solar system, our earth, ourselves. There will be some exciting experiments on artemis ii, mostly focused on radiation and crew because we have the opportunity to have a crew that we have to have to advance this particular kind of science. I do want to say for a moment, personally, as a test pilot how important this mission is for test flight. All the things we want to do with the vehicle, we have to understand the vehicle and capabilities and push the envelope in order to achieve all of the things we hope to do within the future. That is the critical focus of this mission, to do that test flight and push the boundaries and learn about this vehicle and its capabilities so that we can continue to do Amazing Things on the surface of the moon and eventually on mars. This is the beginning of that cadence, and we are excited to be here today to see us off on the first chapter. I just want to say it is always great to come home to florida and kfc. This is where the action actually is, not up in washington, although it is a different kind of action there. This is a great crew, i cannot think of a finer team to be part of. This crew is special. They are great people. Very accomplished. I know when they saw the spacecraft, it makes it real. They know they have a mission coming up. Back to when we were seeing the modules at the International Space station, when they were just an aluminum shell and we watched them come together and be completed we knew we were , going to have a mission when we assembled the space station, it makes it real. We have something to look forward to. I envy them. I know these guys very well and im concerned about their health and safety and as we move forward going to the moon and the south pole, safety is going to be paramount. It is not without risk. We will do our very best to understand all of the issues, the risks, to mitigate them as best we possibly can to ensure the safety of this crew. That means a lot. I want you to know having lived through the challenger as a young astronaut candidate and through columbia, in Senior Leadership position, we are going to do our absolute very best to ensure that when they strap in, we have done all that we possibly can to ensure their safety. We are learning a lot from the first artemis test flight, and that will help prepare us for artemis ii. Jim free, my good friend who is leading this exploration effort for us will share more about that. Good afternoon. It is great to be here. It is really great to share with you where we are with the hardware. We recently towards the end of july completed our postflight assessment review from artemis i, that is what we got all of our objectives and look at all of the items and anomalies and try to decide if we are on the right path for artemis ii. We looked at a number of things that have been open, electronic box on the Service Module, heatshield and some of the , release and retention bolts are the highlights. We have plans for all of those things. We have to get to the root cause before we get to the flight rationale, to bobs point about safety, that is one of the things we need to get through. As far as overall we are working towards the end of november for artemis ii. It is critical to stay on that path. This is a balance of pushing hard but maintaining the right philosophy of not pushing too hard. We still need to get our missions on the cadence where we are doing the exploration on the moon and around the surface. This is a great first step for us. We do need to be vigilant and care about the people going on these missions. We do have a number of weeks of risk to that date, the crew module is the Critical Path right now. We have to get the crew module tested and assembled and turned over to the ground system looks for processing. The expiration of ground system Team Continues to push towards the midnovember role of launch, of the mobile launch tower out to the pad to do some validation tests of all the systems that have been upgraded and repaired artemis one and they are on a good path for the 16th. A couple weeks ago they repaired the cable that holds up the crew access arm. That was a big change. We were originally going to roll out november 1 but it was a repair we had to make. I talked about the crew module of orion already and im sure it was great to see that for the crew. The Service Module was handed over from our european Service Module partners and the European Space agency in june. We are continuing to work on the heatshield. We will probably look for final disposition of that early next year. The space launch system, all of the hardware is here right now it except the core stage which is being held in louisiana for repairs we need to make one of the down comers and that will probably be shipped in november. There is no impact to the overall Critical Path or anything for the stacking which will probably start in next february. From a flight ops perspective, true training crew training is well underway. The landing and Recovery Team here at kennedy did the underweight recovery test last week including a night recovery and the crew got to see the team in san diego before they put to sea. We are not working major issues right now. We have some of the dispositions i talked about, i think we are on a good path. I want to stress the vigilance. Artemis one was a great mission. We learned so much. Success was incredible. The only thing that carries us over from the mission is the engineering. We are using all new hardware so putting that hardware together and calling out when things are not right is really important because these folks next to me depend on us to do that. That will be the focus of the team and i look forward to talking with you as we head closer to artemis ii. We made it to kennedy this is awesome i will speak on behalf of victor, christina, and jeremy and we will get into some questions. We are fired up, it is a great day yesterday, when you walk around the corner at the Neil Armstrong operations check out facility and you see the spacecraft you are will be writing in. It was riding in. It is fascinating. We have been busy since april 3, it started with a bit of a media blitz but then we found work and we have been studying spacecraft systems, we have gone out to denver to visit with the locking lockheed a facilities and meets the engineers working on the vehicle. As jim said, we were out in san diego working with United States navy and rescue and recovery forces walking alongside nasa and now here we are for the first visit as a crew to the Kennedy Space center. I want to touch on two quick things, first, we get asked often what the measure of success for artemis ii is. For us sitting here, seeing our colleagues on the lunar surface, seeing us assembling gateway, seeing people following in our footsteps walking on bars and coming back to planet earth. That is the measure of success for us. Artemis ii is the tiniest footnote in the Artemis Campaign and that is what we believe in and every day we go to work we are looking at this vehicle for the future. That means a lot to us. The other thing i wanted to say because it has struck us is we hear about the hardware and it is real, most of you saw it afternoon with the spacecraft, those who have been there have seen the booster, in utah or are booster shipments are getting ready for stacking, as we go around and see the hardware, the thing that blows us away is the quality and the usefulness of the people that are working on this program, these americans, europeans, when you get in these small rooms of 15 to 20 people, you see not only how hard they are working, but how motivated they are, how excited they are, to be a part of this every single day, i wish every american, every canadian, everyone who is a part of this, they could go see what we could see, the quality of these people, it is totally awesome. Thank you. We will take your questions, and for those of us joining on the phone you can press 1. ,for those in the room, please wait for the microphone to reach you. Marcia, associated press. What is your working target day for artemis iii . Is it still late 2025 . For artemis ii, is there upgrading to a real orbital flight . Maybe you could tell me if that adds so much complication, if you would not want to try it . Those are my questions. As for artemis iii, we are working through our contractual dates which is december 2025, we received an updated schedule from spacex that we are looking to get some more detail on, we were at starbase a couple of weeks ago and spent some time going through their major milestones to the Artemis Three Mission which includes the proper transformation as well as the on crew demo. Sharing our philosophies with where they are with the hardware and trying to understand their schedules the more so i think we will look at that and update in the near future but we are holding all the contractors to the december 2025 date. We might fly a different mission, if we have big slips and we looked at if we can do other missions if the possibility exists but right now we are trying to look at their schedule. The spacesuits are heading to pdr in october. That is obviously another piece of hardware that is on the pad, the Critical Path to that mission. As far as why not do an orbital mission, this mission was designed with safety in mind. We will spend that 24 hours in earth orbit, that was our first gate, can we get all the systems checked out before we go to the moon. That was the first aspect is safety. The second was what can we do to get the crew at home safely, even if we lose all of the propulsion capabilities for the orion main engine. We will do the burn and lunar gravity turn us so we do not have to take that risk so everything about risk, even the crew side, we look at what is the right crew size for all of the tasks we have to do versus the risks to put them into fly the mission. Every day i go to work, jeremy tells me we are putting this into lowearth orbit and i keep telling him we are not because we are doing the highly elliptical orbit using the inner cryogenic propulsion stage and tali will be done on that european Service Module built by airbus and we are going to use a use our prop smartly. I look at this Mission Profile as three orbits of earth and i really like the way that we built our first orbit, we get the first 90 minute check out of spacecraft systems and if there is something the Mission Control teams do not like in houston, we come home. We do the burn and go up to 38,000 miles and it gives us the 24 our return capability and if everything is looking good we do the tli burn and a few course corrections on the way up and the way back so i like the way safety is built into this and i do not think we are going into lunar orbit on this one. Congratulations on a great day and thank you for inviting us down here. Senator nelson, there is some discussion about the fact that america is not the only one aiming for the south pole right now. Potentially you have the chinese also targeting the south pole and maybe even the russians. Can you give us a sense of what is in play in that geostrategic issue and needing to get the south pole and if it is a competition to see who gets there first and who would have access to the frozen ice, the water . Senator nelson we are in a space race with china. You see the actions of the Chinese Government on earth. They go out and claim some international islands in the South China Sea and then they claim them as theirs. They build military runways on them. It is called the spratly islands. We want to make sure that the ideals of the artemis accords, which 28 countries have signed, there will be others that will be shortly following, those ideals that we had the peaceful and cooperative uses of space together internationally. That is basically the framework of the artemis accords. Naturally, i do not want to have trying to the south pole first with humans, then say this is ours, stay out, like they have done with the spratly islands. Look at pictures of the south pole, it is not like what you saw where neil and buzz were landing, constantly lit from the sun, a few craters here and there. The south pole of the moon is pockmarked with deep craters. And because of the angle of the sun coming in, most of those craters are in total darkness the entire time. It lessens the amount of the area that you can actually land on and utilize. If indeed we find water in abundance there that could be utilized for future cruise and spacecraft, we want to make sure that is available to all. Not just the ones that are claiming it. You mentioned russia. As a matter of fact, russia has launched a probe to land on the south pole. We wish them well. As you know, we have had a cooperative relationship with russia ever since 1975 with apollo soyuz. We built the space station together and we operate it together. But i do not think that a lot of people at this point would say that russia is actually ready to be landing cosmonauts on the moon in the timeframe that we are talking about. Talking about going to the moon, or possibly china would be. I think the space race is really between us and china. We need to protect the interest of the International Community for exactly the reason we laid i have laid out. Jackie next question, Kristin Fisher with cnn here in the front. Jim, i want to follow up on marshas question about the timeline for artemis three. In june you said you were concerned that the Spacex Starship would not be ready in time and could push the first launch attempt into 2026, i am curious after your trip to starbase if the level of concern had grown, diminished, if you could give an insight into what your conversation with spacex are like right now . As i said back in june, they need to launch multiple times not just for us, but for them. And then they need to launch multiple times for us. So we really want to see them find the success in their launches, including the next one. I know they had a booster fire the other day. My concern is the same because they have not launched. The insight we got from our visit was tremendous. We spent a 12 hour day where we saw the hardware and our teams had the chance to talk and go through the details of the cryogenic propellant transfer mission, the ship to ship transfer, which is the next big milestone in our relationship with them, the kickoff for one of our design reviews. We were able to convey for them the importance to us of talking about the whole picture, the administrator gave the big picture. We need to talk a what it takes to get those people on artemis three to the surface. They are excellent at Technical Details and i think just continuing to grow our relationship beyond commercial crew in this area conveying why it is important why it is important to see the end to end schedule, we have the other elements coming together. That is another concern for me. It starship does not exist by itself. It is an interface for our suits. So the suits contractor has to understand interface and design and emulators and simulators ready for that. Similarly for orion, we need the interface to be worked. I think we have a better understanding of the big picture, relationship and needs. But we know they have proven they can make great progress and im sure they will continue to do that but as i said we are trying to get in the details of the schedule because when we come up with a date, december of 2020 five or whenever, we want to have confidence for our teams that we all have a realistic path to get there. Jackie next we will take a questions from the phones. Reuters. Jim free you mentioned spacex and nasa has an updated schedule. Did the schedule propose backing off that december 2025 date and doing it later . Based on what you have seen now, i know what nasa you are still evaluating things, what do you think is a realistic date for the Mission Based on what you know now . I think my mom is watching probably saying never did i , think that jim would get more questions than the astronauts on the panel. Our teams are trying to understand what are those trades . We got her a contract change, we have to go through a contract change. We had a contractual date with spacex. We need to understand where the pressure points are that they have, what our needs are and decide what is the realism of that. We do not want a zero margin schedule, we have to understand what the margin is in all this and so are teams have to interact. The meeting at starbase was one of many and i thin and then i think we will come out in concert with the Leadership Team of the agency and say here is what we think a realistic date is. Jackie thank you. Next question in the middle. You were talking about the issues with core stage two. When do you expect the stage to be for the engines to be installed. What is the date you need to stage here at k sc . With stacking happening in february. The boeing team has a good handle on the work, this is a different slope than the state we went through last time because the stage last time went down to stennis and it went vertical and had some travel to work with there as this time we are doing all of that work. It is a little bit different and we do not want to push it down here and then have traveled worked on here that brings the team. Its more challenging because we have to rotate the vehicle. If it is vertical you can get all sides of it at once so it adds some time but we feel like the best place to do it is to shoot so i do not expected to go past november. The last issue we had on a down timer was minor and i do not see it pushing much past november. Jackie thank you. Here on the left. Another one for jim free. You mentioned several weeks of risk to the november 2024 date. Does that mean you you have several weeks of margin for that late november date . Would you characterize the heatshield issue as the largest unresolved issue coming out of artemis i at this point . Can you update us on what the root cause of the uneven charring of the heat shield was . And any mitigation you are looking at for artemis to in hardware or the way you fly the reentry . I definitely want the crew to weigh in on this. It is the biggest open issue. We are going towards root cause and this goes to bobs comment about safety. And what the Leadership Team has asked of us is to focus on root cause. We have been through two series of tests, out at ames, the third series is happening this month. We have a full tree we have been working down. We have some theories on what the root cause might be. We will not talk about flight rationale until we get through root cause. I do not want the team to think about flight rationale because as soon as you do that you start to jump past things that might be lurking as a root cause that you might miss. So we have some ideas on what the root cause might be and these tests are slowly buying it down. We have done tests at ames, langley, Wrightpatterson Air Force base in dayton. We are using facilities across the country. We are on a path to the root cause with the final disposition in april and that has to come up all the way through the agency. Technical authority is a big part of it. The crew just heard about it yesterday so they are heavily involved. We will make the right decision to keep them safe. If the decision is to do something drastic, we will. Right now we are on a path to get to the root cause and then we will make the final determination. Did you want to add anything to that . Every time you see me coming, you take a step back, we really have a lot of really strong trust in this team, we have some really talented researchers and engineers looking at the problem. We will find the right solution. Our crew will not launch until we know we are ready and the team knows the vehicle is ready we will keep the pressure on, so. Far, i think all of the right things are being done. Anyone else wants to comment . Jackie we have another question on the phone, the houston chronicle. Hello. This is for jim, i was hoping you could give more detail on what you meant about different missions. Are you suggesting if the lender is not ready in time you might fly astronauts around the moon for a second time . Thank you. A few months ago, pam talked about what we learned from iss. One thing we learned was to make sure we are flexible to keep human spaceflight viable. One thing is to look at the Assembly Sequence if hardware is available and it isnt. It is incumbent upon us to do that. We are trying to look at all the missions we could fly to keep learning. We might want to fly a different mission for three because we want to understand how the system works better. We might not fly artemis through the same way. It is continuing to learn so that eventually we are putting humans on mars. We will not accomplish everything in one mission. We should not expect to. We want to fly safely and advance our understanding of vehicles and systems. Jackie we have another question on the phone from sarah with radio canada. Sarah . [speaking french] i will say a couple of words in french and then in english so it is understood here as well. [speaking french] seeing the capsule for all of us sent shivers down our spine as we saw it for the first time inside. Real heart real hardware made a real impression. Something that stood out for me over the last couple of months as we have gotten into the system deeper is that i already knew going to the moon was hard. But it is harder than i thought. I start to look at all the systems and people trying to get to the solutions we really need to get to them moon and back and still be breathing when we landed in the pacific ocean. It makes an impression. Talking about timelines, what is so obvious to all of us behind the scenes is that the success is not in the touchdown or the launch. It is in the learning that is happening now. Right while we are sitting here. It is stuff that will serve us on our ultimate objective, which is to get to mars. Just a quick question, you talked about training and testing, what do you do to relax . What do you do to mentally prepare for going on this mission . We spend a lot of time spending time with each other, we understand how important this. I have a family. I am a husband and a father and at the time i get to spend with them and they understand how hard we are working to make this successful, being able to be home and relax, that is a win in and of itself. It is great to be here, but it will be great to be back home. Victor brought up family. One of the fun things we do as a crew is get our families together. When we travel our families come and get to know each other and that is a great way to integrate. We feel like a family in and of ourselves but i think they also feel that way. Last night for example on the trip we found a restaurant on the four of us went out to dinner together and had a great time. Camaraderie, spending time together. All the normal things. We will be having group meals in space and we are doing it here on earth to prepare and building the trust and Relationship Building needed for the Successful Mission we will be doing together. Jackie i am hearing a further question about which restaurant. [laughter] we are Government Employees we cannot say next question, orlando. This is for the astronauts. Sorry, jim. Last time reed and i were in the same room we spoke of astronauts telling us great stories, i wonder if each of you have had the opportunity to discuss with any of the people still with us who have already traveled to the moon and if there are any inspirational stories that you might be able to share. I almost missed a call from general tom stafford because i thought it was a telemarketer the day we were announced as a crew. I picked up the phone and what shocked me was how excited he was that we are going back to the moon for the agency, for the nation and for the planet, that was my story. Someone who is active in lunar science and the architecture we will use to go back to exploring the moon and beyond is a man who is still around and active and to see his continued enthusiasm about the project is great. Someone i have had interesting conversations with recently is rusty sweitzer. Our conversation centered around human nature and ancient wisdom. I will save it for later because i think he will have a chance to tell more of the story but the ancient wisdom part was a fascinating conversation. Jackie time for one more question. Here in the front. My question is for mr. Nelson. You mentioned the differences in the artemis ii program, you mentioned the opportunity to try the gateway. The opportunity to land on the moon, what you think about the opportunities for japanese astronauts to land on the moon . Senator nelson this is a question every country in the world is asking. Of course the specific answer to your question will be decided years later. Thus far, those countries who are represented by an astronaut going to the gateway have participated in the planning and will participate as part of the gateway, which is the mini outpost that will orbit the moon. A question about landing on the moon is to be determined. Obviously, it will be as a result of a participation. In japans case, they are interested in doing a compartmented pressurized rover on the moon. That would certainly be a part of the consideration. Other nations are doing the same kind of planning for the future, as well. Even though we have a u. S. Ambassador in japan, he is constantly asking me on behalf of the japanese government these questions, nevertheless, that is going to be determined some period in the future. Jackie thank you all so much. Unfortunately that is all we have time for today. Please feel free to reach out to us and you can learn more about nasas Artemis Ii Mission on nasa. Gov artemis