NASA’s Return To Moon Top Priority For Acting Administrator

SYDNEY—Despite the temporary nature of his job at NASA, acting Administrator Sean Duffy is pressing to keep the U.S. space agency tightly focused on returning astronauts to the Moon, possibly as early as 2027 and hopefully ahead of a planned lunar landing by China.

“We can’t waste a day,” Duffy said Sept. 30 during an interview with Aviation Week on the sidelines of the International Astronautical Congress here. “We want to beat the Chinese and so we had to calibrate the mission to focus NASA on getting us to the Moon. That’s been priority No. 1.”

NASA is aiming to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole in late 2027. That mission—the third in the Artemis program—would follow a crewed flight test around the Moon slated for early- to mid-2026.

With a government shutdown looming, Duffy said he is concerned, but that the agency has contingency plans in place to ensure programs continue. “We’re not going to shut down Artemis. We have a target [launch date] and we want to hit the target, and so we’ve taken those precautions before this potential shutdown would take place,” Duffy said.

After Artemis, Duffy said his next priority is a replacement for the International Space Station (ISS), which is due to be decommissioned in 2030. “I don’t want to say it’s a second category, but I am more focused on the Moon,” Duffy said.

The next phase of NASA’s program to spur commercial alternatives to the ISS is on temporary hold while the agency assesses feedback from a draft solicitation for industry proposals released in late August.

“This is what we’re supposed to do across government—request information, request feedback and then recalibrate how we should move forward based on the responses that we’ve had,” said Duffy, who also serves as secretary of the Transportation Department.

A time frame for moving ahead with the program has not yet been determined, he added.

Also uncertain is NASA’s budget for fiscal 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The Trump administration proposed an overall 24% reduction in the agency’s $25 billion annual budget. Congress has taken preliminary steps to restore NASA’s funding. Meanwhile, the fiscal 2025 reconciliation bill added a one-time $10 billion boost to the agency’s budget.

“I serve the president and the administration, but one of the benefits of having served almost 10 years in Congress is that I’m working with [Texas Republican] Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic counterparts to come to an agreement on how we move forward,” Duffy said.

“Sen. Mark Kelly [an Arizona Democrat] and Sen. Cruz have both been fantastic partners as we think through how we are going to spend the money and [think about] how the future Artemis programs look,” he added.

“We do want to focus on human space exploration,” Duffy noted. “The last administration was focused elsewhere. That doesn’t mean we don’t look at Earth science ... or that we don’t send rovers out. But we’re the only agency that does this, and we’re going to lean into that mission of space exploration.”

Duffy noted that Trump has been very supportive of NASA. “Maybe it comes from when Elon [Musk] would talk to him about space or the Moon or Mars, but he’s interested in our success. He’s interested in us winning the second space race,” Duffy said. “To have that kind of support from the president is key for a victory ... and to make sure that money continues to flow in the pots that are necessary for us to be successful in Artemis II, III, IV, V, VI and beyond.”