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 ju