Trump pushed for a moon landing in 2024. It’s not going to happen. - Washington Post

It started with a soaring speech at the National Space Council by Vice President Pence that laid out an ambitious if improbable goal: NASA astronauts would return to the surface of the moon and do it by 2024.

Now, as the Trump administration departs in defeat, it is clear that the 2024 deadline will not be met, and was likely never an achievable goal, despite having the backing of the White House and a massive lobbying effort by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

To meet the White House’s mandate, which moved up the moon landing from 2028, Bridenstine had said that the agency would need $3.3 billion in next year’s budget to build the first spacecraft capable of landing astronauts on the moon since the Apollo era of the 1960s.

And unlike other unfulfilled promises of the Trump administration — a border wall that didn’t get fully built or the failure to replace the Affordable Care Act with a viable alternative — the effort to return astronauts to the moon is likely to continue under the Biden administration, Republicans and Democrats say, though on a different timeline.

Under Biden, the agency will focus more on Earth science, party officials said, and note that its party platform says, “We support NASA’s work to return Americans to the moon and go beyond the Mars, taking the next step in exploring our solar system.”.

20, would not declare the 2024 deadline dead quite yet, though he did say that given the shortfall in funding, NASA “is going to have to go back to the drawing board.”.

A broad international coalition, such as the one that governs the International Space Station, will provide continuity from one administration to the next, said Wayne Hale, a former NASA flight director, who now chairs an advisory committee.

“This administration has very smartly instituted the Artemis Accords, which binds us with other nations,” he said.

If the test is successful, NASA would then work to put a crew of astronauts in orbit around the moon for Artemis II, before the Artemis III landing.

Even if the contracts aren’t delayed, he said the agency is going to have to reassess the 2024 timeline: “I think it’s important to give the team time to assess what the future might look like.”