Speaking with CBS News on May 28, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the Biden administration’s $24.8 billion fiscal 2022 budget request for NASA is sufficient to keep the Artemis Program on track to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon as early as 2024. Nelson has served as both a U.S. Senator and U.S. Congressman representing Florida—and second member of Congress, after Sen. Jake Garn, to fly aboard the Space Shuttle—and appears to be politically aligned with the Biden administration in areas such as “climate change.”
He also cautioned to CBS: “`I know the goal is 2024. But I think we have to be brutally realistic, that history would tell us, because space development is so hard, that there could be delays to that schedule for the first demonstration flight of landing humans and returning them safely to Earth.
“The $24.8 billion budget request represents a 6.6% boost over 2021 and includes $6.88 billion for the Artemis Moon program and $4 billion for space operations, which covers the International Space Station and commercial crew and cargo missions to the lab complex,” reported CBS.
