>>This week on NewsNight, President Trump's government shakeup lead to changes at NASA.

A look a what the administration will mean for the moon, Mar and the Artemis program.

And how cuts might affec the space agency.

Plus, Governor DeSantis float relocating NASA's headquarters to Florida.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top storie and issues in Central Florida and how they shap our community.

Tonight on the program, we're going to be looking at what the Trump administration might mean for NASA and the Space Coast, from major change expected to the Artemis program and the Space Launch System, to an emphasis on putting human on Mars as quickly as possible to the future role of companie such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.

The space industry and NASA is set for some seismic shifts in the coming years.

This evening, we're going to take a look at both a potential short and long term shifts in emphasis on space policy in Washington and what the implications might be for our region.

President Trump's nominee for NAS administrator is Jared Isaacman.

Isaacman, a billionaire businessman, previousl led two private crewed missions.

>>Inspiration4.

>>Those missions were launched by SpaceX, the dominant government contractor at NASA owned by Elon Musk, who also helms the Department of Government Efficiency.

Even though Trump's pick to leave the space agency has yet to receive a confirmation hearing, the new administration is reportedly already having a significant impact at NASA.

>>We're honored and blessed to have had this opportunity to continue.

>>The president' demanded a quick return of Butch Wilmor and Sonny Williams to astronauts who've been a the International Space Station since last summer on what was supposed t have been an eight day mission until problems emerged with their Boeing's Starliner capsule.

NASA also paused the work of several science committees after President Trump's recent slew of executive orders.

The agency has also reportedly been working on complying with anti-DEI directives from the White House.

The Trump administration is also expected to bring about big long term changes.

The president alluded to his priorities in his inauguration speech last month with Elon Musk watching on.

>>We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the star and stripes on the planet Mars.

>>President Trump there.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week, Brendan Byrne from Central Florida Public Media also has the podcast Are We There Yet?

Good to see you, Brendan.

>>Good to be here.

>>Will Robinson Smith coming back to us from Space Flight Now, nice to see you Will.

>>Good to be back.

Thanks for having me.

>>And for the first time, Brooke Edwards from Florida Today, write about space for Florida Today.

Good to see you, Brooke.

>>It's great to be here.

Thank you for having me.

>>Thanks so much for coming on.

Good to see you guys.

Let's start off with Jared Isaacman shall we?

Brendan, what do we know about him and his priorities?

>>Yeah, well, he's he's taking an unconventional path to space, right?

As we saw in that packag opening up the segment here.

You know, he he bough he chartered the first all civilian flight into orbit through SpaceX.

He's also bankrolling the Polaris Dawn missions.

Conducted the first private spacewalk or spacewalk by a private astronaut.

He's invested in space.

He's also a billionaire.

That is a, you know, entrepreneur that he started when he was younger as payment processing company Shift4.

So he's got a lot of money to throw at space, but he's a very big advocate for human spaceflight exploration.

He's gotten some some endorsements from from former astronaut and organizations that advocate for human spaceflight exploration.

So we can assume that that's what he is going to do moving forward.

He may be an unconventional pick.

But he now is the secon in a row that has gone to space.

That will be the NAS administrator, with Bill Nelson being a spaceflight participant himself.

>>Former Florida senator, of course, Isaacman needs to be confirmed by the Senate.

Until then we have an acting administrator, right, Janet Petro?

I just wonder what stands out to you about her and what she's been doing so far in the job.

I think she said that DOGE will take a look at NASA.

They've also been, few hundred buyouts there.

>>Yeah.

So so she is the former of the Kennedy Space Center.

This was an unconventional pick as well.

Usually the associate administrator takes this position.

The Trump administration named her as as the acting acting director.

In one of her first things that she did as the acting administrator was sent out a company wide or agency wide email about how the agency is going to be following Trump administration directives towards DEI.

And I know some of the sources that that I spoke with that was very unsettling.

And some of the language that that she used in that.

But, yeah, for the time being, she wil she will be the acting director.

Until there is a confirmation, which we do not know when that will be yet.

>>Well, what about those efforts to eliminate diversity programs at NASA?

I mean, what do we know about those efforts and whether it will impact NASA's work or hiring?

I mean, NASA, of course, had promised to put the first woman, first person of color on the moon with Artemis III.

Does it have a fundamental difference to NASA?

>>Well, you can still find some of that language on NASA websites.

As far as landing the first, you know, woman and, believe person of colo is still in that language somewhere but you are starting to see, some of that diversity, equity inclusion language stripped ou from official NASA publications.

If you go to, certain page that were linked to initiatives that were either formally or indirectly connected to, to the DEIA, some of those now lead to 404 error pages.

You know, there's an initiative that would have, furthered connections between, climate work and communities in Central America.

Pages like that are now starting to, to come down.

And so there's a lot of, I think, questions about, you know, operationall what this will functionally mean for the agency.

And I think there' just a lot of uncertainty right now, especially among the NASA workforce.

And some of the folks that Brennan was alluding to, that you know, he and I and that and you have been talking to that you know, are either expressing some constant or or just this sort of chilling effect of they don't feel comfortable really talking much at all because of fear of, you know, the ramifications of that the repercussions of, you know, voicing their opinion and, you know, the knock on effects of what that might mean.

Obviously, NASA historically has prided itself in being an agency where you can come forward and express yourself, an that has led to mission safety.

And so there's some worry, you know, understandably so, that if you create a cultur where you can't speak your mind, what does that mean?

Especially when it comes to human spaceflight.

>>And critics say, we'r seeing this, across government.

Another immediate effect on the agency from the president's executive orders, right, Brendan, is that sort of pausing work on science programs.

What do we know there?

>>Yeah.

So these are agency work groups.

And this the pause was, again, to make sure that these work groups are in compliance with new policies that the Trump administration has put out like DEI.

These are really important work groups that sometimes contain hundreds of scientists, that provide advisory information to NASA as they're planning interplanetary mission and other science investigations as well.

So a pause in that really set back all all of these missions that a lot of times are on time crunches to get launch from this planet during certain windows t to make it to their destinations in time.

So.

>>Well, talking about interplanetary missions eventually at least, I want to talk a little bit about, Artemis and the Space Launch System later Brooke but we got word this week from Boeing about likely layoffs of its employees that work on Artemis.

What do we know so far from your reporting?

I mean, is this simply a matter of the SLS nearly being finished, or is there concern about the future?

What do we know?

>>There is definitely some concern.

But, this wee I reached out to, Boeing, and, what they got back to me was tha they're going to be releasing 400 employee within the coming months.

They said it by April.

So what we know by the Florida Warn Act, they have to give their employees 60 days notice.

So we're going to be seeing these layoffs pretty soon.

What we don't know yet is the, what missions are going to be impacted or what positions are let go.

That's remains to be seen.

What they're working on basically is they're workin on the core stage of the rocket.

Artemis II, its cor stages are standing up science and the the the problem with Boeing is, was I reported one last summer for Florida Today, was that a NASA repor said that, Boeing is overbudget and way behind years behind with, an upper stage of the rocket which is going to power Artemis IV and beyond.

So basically it's just a waiting game to see.

>>Interesting.

And I'm sure you'll be keeping an eye on it.

Will, I just wanted to talk about, the speedy return of the astronauts from the International Space Station.

President Trump had had asked that those astronauts be returned expeditiously.

Of course, they were taken into orbi on Boeing Starliner last year.

What has changed about the timetable?

And do we know whether that was a result of the president's demands?

>>So the biggest thing that's changed i the timetable is the spacecraft that's going to be launchin next from Florida Space Coast.

>>Yeah.

>>So NASA typically has these six month increments with its astronauts that go to and from the International Space Station.

Right now, crew nine is on the ISS, crew ten is going to come behind them.

Originally, crew ten was going to be using the fifth and newes Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX.

To make a long story much shorter, the rollout of that new Dragon has been running into some issues, and it was originally going t be launching in late February.

That became late March.

It's sounding like work is still needed to continue, so it's to be determined exactly when it will be ready to fly.

And so in order to not further delay the launch of crew ten and consequently the return of crew nine, including Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, they decided to swap the Dragons.

And so that created the new launch dat of no earlier than March 12th.

Now where that all fits with the president's comments and will be heard from Elon Musk on X.

You know it does create some some questions of did one, you know, directl lead to the change of the other?

Hard to say.

But you know NASA has a lot on its plate, especially when it comes t the International Space Station and its timetable.

I mean, they want to see the launch of Sierra Space Dream Chaser space plane up to the space station, have the regular rotation of Crew Dragon spacecraft and Cargo Dragons as well.

So to get this crew compliment, you know, hand it over, you know, is is helpful for them to to move things along so it it all sort of works in concert.

>>Well, either way, I'm sure Butch and Sunny will be glad to get back on to, terra firma soon enough.

But be sure to join the conversation as well on social media, we're at WUCF TV, on Facebook and Instagram is also find us @NewsNightWUCF on X.

Next tonight let's expand out the horizon a little bi and look at some of the longer term change that could be coming for NASA.

I sat down this week with longtime CBS New Radio space reporter Peter King, and we started by talkin about the future of the Space Launch System and the kinds of upheaval NASA faces when a new administration takes over in Washington.

>>The office of the Inspector General of NASA said that basically they've spen $25 billion on SLS so far, and that every subsequent launch after the next one, the first four launches reall would cost $2 billion a piece.

That's a lot of mone for a rocket that's disposable.

Use it once and throw it away.

For prospective shuttle launches, each cost about 365 million.

The SLS Space Launch System is also been called the Senate Launch System because it was the Senate that pushed it through, and Bill Nelson, who was our former senator from here and the most recent NAS administrator, was behind that.

And there was a lot o speculation that at some point, SLS is going to have to go away because it's simply too expensive and too far behind schedule.

The question becomes, does it mean that they fly this and that, what's already in the VAB being put together and it's one and done?

And the question is, if they stop SLS after that, what do they use?

>>I mean, Elon Musk has said he wants to get to Mars.

The president has said he wants to get to Mars in relatively short order.

I wonder how much of this eventually is going to fall to the private sector.

NASA's obviously invested a huge amount of money in the Artemis program, but at the end of the day, do you anticipate it coming down to the private sector to try to get us to these places?

>>You know, I think you may absolutely be right on the money with that, because there's only so much money that the government has and that the taxpayers are willin to put into something like this.

I think, you know if anybody's going to get there first I think it's going to be Elon.

But the question is, you know, how soon will that happen?

I think he wants to be there by, what, 2028, 2029?

I think that's a fantasy dream.

But I also wouldn't put anything past him because he's really accomplished a lot with SpaceX.

The other thing is that Elon, of course, has Trump's ear.

And we're not just talking about DOGE which is going into all the government agencies, hasn't gotten to NASA yet by the way, as far as we know.

But he's got Trump' ear and Trump believes in him.

But does the line between NASA and private industry get blurred?

Jared Isaacman, of course, is the nominee to be NASA administrator.

He also has a Space company.

You've got Elon Musk, who's a special government employee who's also got a Space company, and he's a government contractor, very, very large one.

And I wonder whether, for all intents and purposes, NASA is not the same agency that it was decades ago.

>>No, it certainly isn't.

But, you know, space isn' the same as it was decades ago.

And you've got a problem with, Isaacman and with with Musk.

Conflict of interest.

You know, where where is the wall between, you know, the good of the country, the good of space and the good of business, and somehow they have to figure out how to make all of that work.

We know that both of those guys have Trump's ear, and I have no doub that Isaacman will be a good administrator for NAS because he believes in believes in space, and he's proven it by the kinds of investments he's made.

>>You've covered the spac program for a long time, right?

You've see presidential transitions happen.

You've seen, presidential administrations have changes in priority.

And I wonder whether it's common to see this kind of upheaval when those events take place or or is this a sort of a different level from what you've seen before?

>>Well, there are always going to be changes.

It was a pretty, pretty steady han from the beginning of the space age, from the Eisenhower era, really through Bush too, after the Columbia accident, though the second President Bush said, okay, we've got to end the shuttle program safely, finished the space station, and then go on to moon Mars with something called constellation, where they, developed new rocket designs.

The Orion spacecraft was originally part of that.

>>Yeah.

>>But guess what?

President Obama elected in 2008, and shortly after that, there's, a report from Norm Augustine, the former head of Lockheed Martin, that basically said constellation is not sustainable.

And they wound up launching the Ares one rocket once.

And that was it.

And they started from scratch all over again, keeping Orion but dumping the rest of the moon Mars initiative that had been called constellation.

So things can change.

And I think we can expec to see changes when it comes to whatever Artemis is, is goin to be, is and going to become.

>>Peter King from CBS News Radio.

You can find my full interview with Peter on our website wucf.org/newsnight.

Also on YouTube, it' a fascinating discussion, so hopefully you'll check it out.

Brendan, let me start with you on a big picture question.

What do you think we'll se emerging in terms of the Trump administration's key goals for NASA?

I mean, it hasn't been anything concrete outlined yet.

>>I think building upon our conversation from earlier in the show with a pick like Jared Isaacman, you can see that there's going to be a large focus o human space exploration, right?

I mean, Isaacman is a champion of human space exploration.

He's very close with with Musk.

Musk has a very big focus on that as well.

I can certainly see that being the driving force of, of of what happens in NASA's kind of long term goals while they're at the helm.

>>What do you think Will?

>>Well, I think that's right.

You know, I think there will be a pretty heavy focus on both human exploration as well as Mars exploration whether that's through robotic mission like we have seen historically, or whether there's a further push for humans to have their footprints on Mars.

You know, given the comments that we heard from President Trum during his inaugural address to, you know, Elon Musk's, determination to get humans on Mars.

You know, we've seen walking around with Occupy Mars on his t shirt underneath the blazer continuously.

I think there may b some changes where it concerns the Artemis program, though.

When you look beyond the Artemis three mission, given that there's already a lot of hardware and flow right now for those next to human missions, but starting with Artemis four, you need the exploration upper stage, which Brooke mentioned.

You need a new mobile launcher which is currently being built at the Kennedy Space Center right now, but it's still to be determined if there may be some cuts to that.

The gateway to, you know, what the future Artemis architecture looks like practically.

What what do you think, Brooke, about the Artemis program?

You've been covering that, long term changes to Artemis.

What do you see?

I mean, NASA has said that the SLS itself is essential.

>>They have definitely.

And their long term goal was to go to Mars.

The moon is going to be first up.

Then they were going to establish the gateway and then off to Mars eventually.

But that was far into the future.

But what we see with Elon Mus and especially his starship and, both now President Trump's push toward Mars, this remains to be seen.

What could be like Will said what could be changed with gateway.

>>What about the contractors for SLS and Artemis as well?

What are what are they saying?

Have they said anything abou how they see the future of this?

>>Well, they were actually asked very directly, by one of our colleagues at the space com conference at the end of January, you know, with this new administration.

What what do you think?

What are you telling your workforce and the representative with Lockheed Martin, you know, basically said, look, we're telling them basically what we tell them every four years, which is this is a period of change.

Things will adjust and adapt.

But as far as we're concerned, as, as a, you know, a NASA prime, we're going to keep our heads down and we're going to continue to do the work that NASA is asking us to.

As long as NASA is asking us to and still remain focused on the missions at hand you know, backed by Matt Ramsay, who is the Artemis two mission manager, who said, you know, our focus right now is Artemis two.

We're going to continue to let that be, you know, the big driver for the Artemis program for NASA.

>>I'm just wondering, you know, we heard from the president earlier, talking about that sort of renewed emphasis on getting to Mars, which of course, is the eventual goal, of Artemis.

But he wants to do it by 2029.

Are the president's goals attainable?

>>Steve, I like to think that I'm more optimistic than some of my reporting colleagues.

And I don't think that that's happening.

2029 is a very, very difficult time to get there.

I mean, but we've seen it in in Trump's first presidential administration, he wanted a big milestone event to happen in space.

It's why he increased the timetable of the Artemis missions in that first term.

He wants something big for this second term as well.

So he's going to continue to push that for a number of reasons.

I think Mars 2029 i just not going to happen, right?

I mean, we still haven't gotten human on the moon yet on the hardware is not in place there.

So I don't know.

I don't think 2029 is is is going is going to happen.

Yeah.

And plus you have to remember you only have limited time slots to get to Mars, right?

When the planets are aligned and they're in their closest, they're it's like every two years.

So you're really under a time crunch to get all this hardware prepared to get humans safely there and back.

If that is the goal.

>>I mean, do you think so?

And I wonder how much also, Elon Musk is driving this agenda because Elon Musk, of course, as you mentioned, is very keen on getting to Mars himself.

>>Given that there's so much new technology and approaches that are being rolled out through the Artemis program.

A lot of them being tested on the moon to make Mars a more viable option.

I think it's it's going to have to take longer.

And, you know, a big driver of that is SpaceX and Starship under the current Artemis architecture, given the development of that vehicle to be able to launch rapidly.

And, you know, we still have to see SpaceX demonstrate that they can do an on orbit propellant transfer.

That's a very difficult thing to put a Starship tanker in orbit, put enough propellant onto that, then offload that to the lander version of Starship, and then send that to the moon to dock with Orion to go down to the surface to come back up again.

So there's a lo that still has to be proven out before we get to the moon let alone Mars, which introduces a whole nother se of complexities of challenges.

You know, if we're nothing else, the human psyche has just been gone that long and that far from Earth, which we've never done before.

>>There's a reason why they say space is hard.

I mean, all of this brings to question this issue of a conflict of interest that Peter just referred to in his interview.

Elon Musk, of course, is charged with trimming the government and is a large government contractor, what are the concerns of NASA about that?

>>The main concern right now is the Artemis program specifically the SLS rocket.

SLS is right now from all the reports, very much overbudget around 93 billion over budget.

And, Elon Musk's Starship even though it's not operational yet, will cut cost drastically because Starship will not only be able to land the Super Heavy booster, bu it will available in the ship.

So that's going to bring back rapid reusabilit and also cut cost drastically.

And for this reason, experts have been speculating that why not just cut SLS entirely?

Do we know how Elon Musk's role at NASA is sort of viewed with inside the agency?

>>I think it sort of is part and parcel to the conversation we had earlier.

There's a lot of hesitance to truly speak your mind, so it's a little hard to see, you know, the true insigh of how the workforce is feeling.

But, you know, from, you know, conversations I've had and some of my colleagues, it seems like there's some concern about, you know, how close of - and to Brooke's point, how important SpaceX is as a contractor to NASA and how objective Elon Musk could potentially be when it comes to making you know, agency wide, impacting cuts to to science missions to, you know, things that may direct him and his companies, you know, very specifically.

>>Brendan Is that what you hear?

>>Yeah.

And I you know, I would echo that and say there's also concerns that with Musk's, ability to be doing these audits, he is seeing document or could possibly see documents of his competitors that have pu bids in at NASA and all that.

So yes, there there are very larg conflict of interest flags here.

And that is a concern to both people inside and outside of the agency.

>>We'll see how that all pans out.

You'll find a link to the Artemis program, meanwhile on our website wucf.org/newsnight.

I want to finish tonight by talking about a suggestion governo DeSantis made about a month ago.

Take a listen.

>>There is an interes in moving the headquarters of NASA right here to Kenned Space Center, and I'm supportive of that.

They have this massive building in Washington, D.C., and like, nobody goes to it.

So why not just shutte it and move everybody down here?

>>Governor DeSantis there.

Brooke, what have you bee hearing out on the Space Coast?

Is there some enthusiasm about the headquarters of NASA moving there?

>>There definitely is.

My, recently Florida Today reporter on the subject, and basically the CEO of Space Florida Rob Long said it was a great idea, pretty much.

NASA's located in Florida already.

We launch all the major missions from Florida from the Kennedy Space Center, all the major science missions from processing to launch.

>>What about you?

What are you hearing?

>>Obviously, there's, you know, quite a bit of diversity from NASA across the United States.

You know, whether you're talk about I mean, just later this month, we're going to see a very important NASA mission, sphere X and punch launch from the West Coas and Vandenberg Space Force Base.

You've also got Wallops not to speak of.

You know, all of the NASA centers across the country as well.

So I think it'll b an interesting conversation on whether or no it makes sense to move the sort of nerve system of NASA down here to Florida.

I think there's, you know, potentially an argument to be made for staying in D.C., you know, just being closer to the decision makers, the people that, you know, craft the budget, having mor of those direct conversations.

You know, I think it'll be interesting to watch over the next few years.

It's it's hard to say, you know, where exactly the winds may blow, but also there's been a pus for more people to come back to, you know, being in the office.

So, you know, to the governor's comments of it being a somewhat empty building, I think we'll see a change in that in the very near future.

>>Well, I'm sure you guys will be keeping a close eye on all of it going forward, but that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Brendan Byrne, Central Florida Public Media, Will Robinson Smith from Space Flight Now and Brooke Edwards from Florida Today.

Good to see you guys.

Thanks so much for comin on.

Really great conversation.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

In the meantime, from all of us here at NewsNight.

Take care and have a great week.