Transportation Secretary and acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said “when we go back to the moon, we’re going to stay” when discussing the space program’s upcoming manned Artemis launches.
Duffy joined Fox Business on Thursday morning to share more about the Artemis 2 mission, which NASA recently said will launch a crew of four astronauts to fly around the moon as early as February 5, 2026:
After Artemis 2, the Artemis 3 mission will land astronauts on the moon’s surface for the first time since NASA’s Apollo program ended in 1972, Duffy said.
“So listen, this is exciting. This is the first time we’re going back to the moon, you know, since the 70s,” the acting NASA leader said. “We’re not going to land this time, we’re going to go out around the moon and come back. And by the way, our four person crew is amazing.”
“… And so what we learn on Artemis 2 is going to bring us to Artemis 3, where we’re going to land back on the moon,” Duffy went on to tell Fox Business host Stuart Varney.
When Artemis 3, scheduled to launch sometime in mid-2027, lands on the moon, Duffy said “we’re going to set up a base.”
File/NASA’s Artemis 1 lifts off from launch pad 39-B at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, carrying the Orion spacecraft on a mission to orbit the moon, early Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“And this time, when we go back to the moon, we’re going to stay, we’re going to set up a base,” he explained, before adding that the “knowledge” NASA picks up from the upcoming moon trip will “bring us, I think, to Mars as well.”
Acknowledging that China also wants to get to the moon, the administrator added, “We’re going to win this second space race.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
