Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday that NASA should land astronauts near the south pole of the moon within five years “by any means necessary,” calling for “new urgency” in the U.S. space program and sounding a warning for entrenched aerospace contractors to better meet schedule and cost commitments, or else lose work to other companies.
“It is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years,” Pence said. “The first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts, launched by American rockets from American soil.”
NASA and the Trump administration previously aimed to land astronauts on the moon by 2028. Pence said the National Space Council, which he chairs, will send recommendations to President Trump for a “major course correction” at NASA.
“To accomplish this, we must redouble our efforts,” Pence said.
During his remarks Tuesday at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Pence singled out the troubled Space Launch System — a heavy-lift rocket in development to launch crews into deep space — as an example of a program “plagued by bureaucratic inertia.”