NASA administrator on the year ahead: ‘A lot of things have to go right’

Reported today on The Verge

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Reported today in The Verge.

NASA administrator on the year ahead: 'A lot of things have to go right'

NASA has a big to-do list for 2020, as the agency continues to build its Artemis program with the goal of sending the first woman to the Moon by 2024. This year, NASA also hopes to start launching its astronauts from the US again, after nearly a decade of launching them to space on Russian vehicles. It's still unclear if NASA will meet all the ambitious deadlines it has set for itself.

Yet, the agency has already started off this year strong. This weekend, SpaceX launched a crucial flight test for NASA that could pave the way for the company to start launching the space agency's astronauts sometime this year. That puts NASA in a good starting position, though there's still quite a lot of work to be done.

The Verge spoke with NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine about what we can expect for 2020 and how confident he is that the agency can meet its ambitious timelines.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

This is the first big flight for NASA this year. How does that set the tone for the year ahead?

I think it went as well as it could have gone. Of course, I always have to say we've got a lot more data to go through. But you know, we had an end-to-end test of a launch abort system, which is the most complicated and most dynamic environment that we're going to fly in. All of the data that's coming in, it looks like everything is right down the middle where it ought to be. So I think it's good for the agency to see an end-to-end very successful mission.

Now, the Starliner [flight test] did end well. But obviously, it didn't have the exact flight profile we were hoping for. How was experiencing this test after going through that test in December?

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