NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman paid a visit to the University of Central Florida Friday to discuss the future of space flight with students.
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The “Space Starts Here” event kicked off shortly after 3 p.m., opening with introductions from UCF Vice President for Research and Innovation Dr. Winston Schoenfeld, assistant professor of aerospace studies and U.S. Space Force Maj. Haida StarEagle and District 9 House Rep. Darren Soto.
Isaacman took to the podium to announce that the administration will be going back to the moon following the Artemis II launch in April. The NASA chief said he doesn’t think they should be waiting several years between launches.
“We absolutely need to maintain that muscle memory,” he said. “Once a year should be the bare minimum for a rocket as complicated as [Space Launch System].”
Artemis III is a test flight in low Earth orbit currently set for 2027, while Artemis IV — the agency’s first planned crew lunar landing since Apollo 17 — is planned for 2028, according to NASA’s public schedule.
Isaacman said the organization has already begun stacking Artemis III and will conduct a tanking test before the end of the year.
He announced NASA also intends to build a moon base. Isaacman said they are aiming to build up to long-term crew rotations on the lunar surface, starting with days to weeks until the “safe haven” is not the spacecraft, but the lunar base itself.
Isaacman said the first mission is coming up in January, which will take a robotic lander and the FLIP rover to the surface. He said the goal is for these missions to occur near-monthly.
“This is really important because this is how we did it in the 1960s,” Isaacman said. “We didn’t just jump to Apollo 11. We had the Mercury program, Gemini program, and a lot of Apollo missions before the Eagle ultimately landed. We need to do the same thing if we are going to try and create an outpost on another world.”
Isaacman emphasized the importance of the future of the mission to students, especially as China attempts to put a crew on the lunar surface before 2030.
“This is your opportunity to contribute to history, and we need it,” Isaacman said to the crowd. “We need the engineers, we need the scientists, the technicians, we need the operators, and we need the astronauts because if you’re going to build a moon base, you’re gonna want to send a lot of people there to master the skills for where we go next, which is Mars.”
UCF officials say an estimated 29% of employees at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are graduates of the self-dubbed SpaceU. The university was originally founded in 1963 as Florida Technical University to provide talent to the space industry as the Space Race unfolded.
Shelby Wooten, a mechanical engineering student and the director of external affairs for Students for the Exploration and Development of Space at UCF, is a Lake Mary native. She said of all the Florida universities, she chose to attend UCF because of its connection to the space industry.
“UCF is SpaceU,” Wooten said. “So wanting to be involved within space — it was the first choice for me always.”
During a Q&A with the crowd, Isaacman encouraged students to pursue NASA internships and commercial space opportunities.
As Florida lawmakers — including Governor-elect Byron Donalds — continue to push for NASA headquarters to house itself in Florida in 2028, Isaacman said he believes it’s important for NASA to retain its presence in D.C.
“Everybody does love NASA, and it does take the contributions from across the nation to arrive in the correct direction, which right now happens to be towards the moon,” he said. “I think Washington, D.C. happens to be the best location to gain that alignment, but that certainly doesn’t diminish in any way the critical importance of Kennedy Space Center.”
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