The October 14-27, 2004 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology published a recent interview with NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, regarding the direction of NASA’s objective and the political environment the agency is operating it programs. Key discussion was centered on the affordability of the Artemis program, the potential to leverage commercial endeavors to meet Artemis goals, and the impact of China’s stated lunar goals on agency focus and teaming with international partners. The main takeaways from Nelson’s interview are as follows:
- Nelson believes in the value of internation partnerships such as the US-Russian human space program partnership via the ISS program. Nelson answers that the required cooperation between both programs was integral to executing the ISS mission such that “[its] has kept us together under very difficult circumstances, with Putin rampaging all over Ukraine.”
- Nelson does not foresee NASA’s and the Artemis program’s (specifically) objectives being met by private endeavors. Nelson brings up the need to look at successes such as SpaceX and challenges like Boeing’s Starliner as evidence that the private space industry still requires heavy public investment to enable their individual commercial space evolution. The perception that there is cost savings by standing down the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft if SpaceX’s Starship becomes operational do not take into account the extensive previous investment NASA provided SpaceX during early Falcon 1 development. Nelson states “All I know is there is only one [Moon-/Mar-class] rocket flying and that is the SLS. The others are not off the ground and haven’t orbited yet, so I’ve got to take it one step at a time.”
- The pressure to get to Moon and establish the Artemis presence is driven by China’s supremacy goals. Nelson cites China’s invasion of other nation’s territorial waters within the South China Sea as explicit demonstration of their goals. Nelson expands to say “I don’t want that to happen on the south pole of the Moon. I don’t want China to get there before we do with astronauts and as a result say, ‘This is ours, stay out,’ when, in fact, if we have found water in abundance it becomes a very valuable resource on the Moon.” Nelson does not believe that Chinese and U.S. human space programs will be able to reach the level of cooperation given the current stated Chinese intent. Nelson implies that the international cooperation on the Lunar Gateway is a method to establish a more cooperative lunar mission environment to counter a potential singular adversary.
Cyber security takeaways from the Nelson interview are as follows:
- Reaching the Moon before China is a key goal for NASA’s administration. International partnership enables cost sharing and a counter for singular Chinese lunar action. International partnership also implies that lunar policy will seek to maintain a potential “open access” lunar environment for resource use. Any cybersecurity implemented will require standards that protect the international Artemis endeavor, focusing on circumventing Chinese nation-state threat actors.
- Limited budgets across the International Partners and NASA will likely mean that cybersecurity implementations will be weighed against their ability to protect against assess Chinese attack vectors and potential impacts. Cybersecurity implementations will likely focus on the space-based system level to drive lunar operation establishment over ground-based systems and/or supply chain management. Mission operation centers (MOCs) will likely not see extra funding allocated to them for upgrades to cybersecurity protocols beyond what is necessary to implement the Artemis program. MOCs may be challenged across the international enterprise to provide competitive packages that include Artemis cybersecurity requirements for final selection.
- When asked if there were any concerns about the supply chain feeding into NASA, Nelson’s response was “The short answer is “no.” and the longer answer is “why?” Because if there is a business case to be made, it will come.” This response indicates that current funding levels for supply chain management are likely not to change. Focus on supply chain security will not see agency-based increases unless the Artemis program demonstrates a significant risk to the execution of lunar exploration.
- Suppose Chinese state actors do execute cyber attacks on the Artemis program. In that case, there is a question of how the US and International Partners will address nation-state cyberattacks on scientific missions. In this scenario, there is a concern about how much will be elevated to an international intervention front as the Artemis program is founded on science-based exploration principles vice power projection. Given Nelson’s concern regarding China’s supremacy actions, it is recommended that this scenario be a targeted discussion amongst the International Partner leadership for potential policy implementation.