Four NASA senior officials working on the agency's moon program, Artemis, will retire this week.
These officials were part of the team that succeeded in launching Artemis I as "the first flight test of the integrated Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket," according to NASA's website. The unmanned rocket flew 40,000 miles beyond the moon and back, for a total of 1.4 million miles, "demonstrating our capability to send humans to lunar orbit on the second flight test."
Saturday will be the last day for Jim Free, an associate administrator who will retire after 30 years with the agency. During his tenure as the associate administrator, Free achieved the first lunar landing via the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
"It has been an honor to serve NASA and walk alongside the workforce that tackles the most difficult engineering challenges, pursues new scientific knowledge in our universe and beyond, develops technologies for future exploration endeavors, all while prioritizing safety every day for people on the ground, in the air, and in space," Free said in a statement. "I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of the NASA family and contribute to the agency's mission for the benefit of humanity."
Free is joined by three other officials who are retiring after working at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the headquarters for the Artemis mission. These retirements were announced internally, according to a source cited by Reuters.
The United States remains the first and only country to land a man on the lunar surface. While NASA had plans to return astronauts to the moon in 2024 with the Artemis II mission, and a moon landing was set for 2025 with the Artemis III mission, these have been postponed to 2026 and 2027, respectively.
President Donald Trump nominated billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Isaacman led two private space flights and is credited with organizing the first private spacewalk.
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Other billionaires have entered the space industry. Jeff Bezos started Blue Origin 25 years ago and has seen success with its New Shepard passenger rockets, which take paying customers into space from Texas. Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to Trump, has his SpaceX company, which has the goal of achieving missions to Mars.
SpaceX has some $15 billion in contracts with NASA. Among them is a deal to land humans on the moon in its Starship rocket.