On Sunday, Dec. 11, Artemis I returned to Earth.

Last week's splashdown off the California coast, after nearly a month in space, proved Artemis's Orion space capsule can carry astronauts to the moon and bring them back safe and sound. It set the stage for more than a dozen future Artemis missions that NASA has planned. It also arguably saved the entire Artemis program from potential cancellation, setting the stage for some of America's best-known space companies to reap tens of billions of dollars in future revenue.

As recently as 2019, a combination of development delays and cost overruns in building Artemis' key components -- the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion space capsule -- had space industry insiders publicly musing that the program could be rocketing toward cancellation. Subsequent reports from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), estimating the cost of each Artemis launch at $2 billion -- and from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) putting the cost at $4.1 billion -- added pressure on NASA to prove SLS could fly.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com