{"id":375006,"date":"2026-04-11T20:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T20:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375006\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T20:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T20:41:18","slug":"jubilant-return-of-artemis-ii-shadowed-by-extinction-level-cuts-to-nasa-its-discordant-artemis-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375006\/","title":{"rendered":"Jubilant return of Artemis II shadowed by \u2018extinction-level\u2019 cuts to Nasa: \u2018It\u2019s discordant\u2019 | Artemis II"},"content":{"rendered":"

The astronauts on board Artemis II<\/a> were \u201calmost poets\u201d, Nasa\u2019s administrator, Jared Isaacman, declared on Friday, referring to their inspiring words<\/a> as they swung above the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

They were, he said, \u201cambassadors for humanity\u201d as they became the first humans to travel to the moon and return safely to Earth since 1972, on a mission that broke a distance record<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the mood at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday night was one of jubilation and celebration as the Orion capsule made a textbook splashdown<\/a> in the Pacific Ocean after its 10-day lunar odyssey.<\/p>\n

Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space<\/a> Agency, will give a press conference later on what they saw and experienced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mission is over but the melody lingers on,\u201d Nasa<\/a> TV commentator Derrol Nail noted.<\/p>\n

In truth, the successful conclusion of the US space agency\u2019s first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years represented unquestionably its biggest achievement since the Apollo generation.<\/p>\n

To do again what no other country has managed to accomplish once leaves the US with a significant advantage in the new space race<\/a> with China for the next moon landing and construction of a permanent habitat there.<\/p>\n

Yet once the celebratory flags stop waving, and the engineers of Artemis refocus their attentions on the challenges ahead, it is hard to escape the notion that the biggest hurdle to the realization of the country\u2019s grand ambitions in deep space lies within.<\/p>\n

Even as Integrity, the mission moniker for the Orion capsule of Artemis II, ascended into the heavens days ago, Donald Trump was announcing his intention<\/a> to slash Nasa\u2019s budget by 23%, including a 46% cut for space science initiatives. And the Artemis program that has run years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget offers no guarantees that the next, far harder stages will run as smoothly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe path to the lunar surface is open, but the work ahead is greater than the work behind us. It always will be,\u201d Nasa\u2019s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya said on Friday at a post-landing press conference in Houston.<\/p>\n

\u201cFifty three years ago, humanity left the moon. This time we return to stay. Let us finish what they started.\u201d<\/p>\n

No space analyst will discount the magnitude of what Artemis II<\/a> has brought to the US human spaceflight program. Undoubtedly, the vision of a permanent lunar base has moved closer with the knowledge that the US possesses, finally, another proven rocket and capsule assembly that can sustain human life beyond lower-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

But there is also the president, who expressed in a post to his own Truth Social on Friday how proud he was of the \u201cgreat and very talented<\/a>\u201d crew while making no mention of his desire to impose \u201cextinction-level\u201d cuts<\/a> to the agency he purports to value.<\/p>\n

Isaacman said he supported the<\/a> White House desire to strip a further $6bn in funding from his agency, insisting that the levels \u201care sufficient\u201d to meet \u201chigh expectations and deliver on all mission priorities\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, said Isaacman\u2019s argument makes no sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administrator is part of the administration, and the budget document is an official policy statement of the administration, so he has to be on board,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s discordant. The budget itself is seemingly contradictory with a number of statements that Nasa leadership said a few weeks ago at the Ignition event<\/a>. It adds more confusion to this situation than clarity and is a baffling piece of political ideology from an alternate universe in which they didn\u2019t suffer an overwhelming defeat of that proposal just months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dreier was referring to a rare display of bipartisanship in Congress in January that rejected<\/a> an almost identical proposal by Trump for Nasa\u2019s 2026 budget, and looks likely to do so again for 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it a copy-paste budget, and I\u2019m not really exaggerating because some of the highlights include how they would find savings by canceling the Mars sample return, which was canceled last year and is done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no more. You can\u2019t double-cancel it. It mentioned two [other] programs which ended last year. There are major errors such as requesting funding for both the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes because they forgot to change the cut and paste, right?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a sloppy request in, again, an alternate universe where they\u2019re acting like their budget proposal occurred rather than being overturned heartily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dreier said the experience of Artemis II was spoiled by Trump\u2019s demands. \u201cIt reminded me how exciting and astonishing this ability is to just go somewhere new and explore it, and how much I\u2019ve missed that in our society, at least with human spaceflight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimultaneously, it was an experience marred by the fact that the agency that is tasked with keeping these astronauts safe had proposed to be functionally dismantled in one of the more tasteless releases of a draconian budget requested in modern times.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a real insult to the team, to the astronauts, and to the agency itself on achieving the most difficult thing anyone has done in spaceflight, to propose dismembering the agency to such a degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the reservations, Nasa will celebrate long and hard its achievement in bridging a near 54-year gap from Earth to the moon, and is already looking ahead to Artemis III, scheduled for next year, which will test human lunar landing systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe childhood Jared right now can\u2019t believe what I just saw, I mean I\u2019ve almost been waiting my whole lifetime to see this,\u201d Isaacman told Nasa TV from the crew recovery ship USS John P Murtha in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon, bringing them back safely, and setting up a series more. This is not a once in a lifetime, which you hear sometimes around here. No, it\u2019s not. This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dreier was keen to point out that his criticism about the White House budget proposal did not affect his admiration for the Artemis II crew\u2019s achievements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly important turning point that we have the hardware to take people into deep space and back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of an interesting triumph for the classic aerospace contracting model, very expensive, but it has worked, and now we\u2019re going to place the rest of the bet on the commercial systems to follow through on that timeline.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this didn\u2019t work correctly we wouldn\u2019t, there\u2019s no feasible way we\u2019d be landing on the moon in the next few years. Obviously, there\u2019s a lot to go and we can\u2019t underestimate how difficult this is. We just have to be extremely humble about how few times this has happened in human history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The astronauts on board Artemis II were \u201calmost poets\u201d, Nasa\u2019s administrator, Jared Isaacman, declared on Friday, referring to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-375006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}