NASA Sets a New Course for Artemis
By Burt Dicht NSS Space Coasts Correspondent NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman opened the October 23 Artemis Acceleration press conference with a reminder of what the agency accomplished during the Apollo program. (Pictured in above image, from left to right: NASA Deputy Press Secretary George Alderman; NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman; NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya; NASA Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons.) The day before marked 58 years since Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on October 22, 1968, completing NASA’s first crewed Apollo mission. Over the next nine months, NASA launched Apollo 8, Apollo 9, and Apollo 10, culminating in the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing in July 1969. It was a remarkable demonstration of what the United States could accomplish when its national resources, technical capabilities, and workforce were focused on a common goal. The urgency was driven in large part by the space race with the Soviet Union. Now, nearly six decades later, NASA faces another challenge as the United States works to return astronauts to the Moon