VP Pence to NASA: Put Americans on the moon in the next 5 years

Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a visit to NASA's Johnson Space Center Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a visit to NASA's Johnson Space Center Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) Photo: David J. Phillip, Associated Press Photo: David J. Phillip, Associated Press Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close VP Pence to NASA: Put Americans on the moon in the next 5 years 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Vice President Mike Pence directed NASA on Tuesday to put humans on the moon again within the next five years, using "any means necessary."

"To accomplish this we must redouble our efforts," Pence said in his opening remarks at the National Space Council meeting at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. "President Trump knows this will require a great investment of time, talent and resources, but the cost of inaction is greater."

And when Americans return to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972, Pence said, they will land at the moon's South Pole.

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Pence is chairman of the council, a group that had been defunct since 1993 until Trump revived it soon after taking office. Reviving the council is just one of many ways President Donald Trump has pushed for a return to the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars since taking office in 2017.

Prior to Pence's speech Tuesday, the administration's plans were to build a mini-space station orbiting the moon, known as the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway, and build and send commercial lunar probes to the surface before humans left boot prints on the celestial body again.

Based on that, humans would have returned to the surface by 2028. But Pence said Tuesday that is "not good enough."

"We have the technology to return to the moon, and we have the renewed American leadership in human space exploration," Pence said. "What we need now is the urgency."

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The announcement comes, however, just a few weeks after Trump released his budget request for the coming fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, which handed down a $500 million budget cut for the space agency.

Pence in his remarks did not mention these cuts -- which still must be approved by Congress -- or explain how they fit into the president's plan to speed up a lunar landing.

Also problematic to this plan is the Space Launch System rocket, which is supposed to send the agency's Orion spacecraft around the moon. Initially scheduled for launch in 2017, the SLS rocket has continued to face burgeoning costs and schedule delays.

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Pence on Tuesday seemed willing to use other alternatives -- including commercial companies -- to get humans back to the moon, calling for a "major course correction."

"I call on NASA to adopt new policies and embrace a new mindset," Pence said. "If our current contractors can't meet this objective, then we'll find ones that will."

The SLS rocket -- a brainchild of President Barack Obama's administration that is being build by Boeing -- most recently was delayed to 2021. Earlier this month, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Congress the agency was investigating launching Orion around the moon on the back of a commercial vehicle so that it could meet the launch deadline.

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He appeared to change his tune Tuesday, saying he's confident SLS can meet the June 2020 launch date.

"If we want to achieve 2024, we need SLS and need to accelerate it," Bridenstine said, adding that NASA needs to build the rocket's planned upgrade as well. Funding for that upgrade, which would increase the rocket's performance, would be postponed under Trump's budget proposal.

NASA has two missions scheduled for the Orion-SLS team. The first Orion spacecraft mission, Exploration Mission-1, is meant to go up without a crew in 2020. The second, Exploration Mission-2, will launch humans around the moon and is supposed to fly no later than 2023.

"Given that [Marshall Spaceflight Center] and @BoeingSpace can only meet the 2020 EM-1 deadline by skipping a lot of required tests and Pence's human landing goal of [2024/2025] by utterly changing their current plans, the private sector now has an unparalleled opportunity to show what they can do," Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website devoted to space news, tweeted Tuesday.

Despite its numerous problems, NASA for years has defended the Space Launch System rocket, saying it was a necessary backbone of their human exploration portfolio.

"We must focus on the mission over the means," Pence said. "We must consider every available option to meet the goal."

Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.