NASA General Inspector Martin: the lunar program will cost $ 93 billion by 2025 
NASA will spend 93 billion on the Artemis lunar program by 2025 dollars. A similar forecast is contained in the report of the Inspector General of the American Space Department, Paul Martin, reports Space.com.
In particular, the document states that the production and launch of one bundle of a super-heavy rocket Space Launch System (SLS) and a spacecraft Orion will cost taxpayers $ 4.1 billion.
The publication notes that the $ 93 billion estimate covers the period of work being carried out from 2012 to 2025 fiscal year. For comparison, from 1960 to 1973, the United States spent $ 280 billion on the Apollo program (at the current rate).
The document also notes that the American landing on the lunar surface of the United States in 2024 may be delayed by several years, due to the unavailability of spacesuits and the Human Landing System (HLS) landing system.
In October, NASA set the closest launch date for SLS from Orion to the Moon on February 12, 2022. As part of the unmanned mission Artemis 1, the spacecraft must fly around a natural satellite of the Earth. Depending on the relative positions of the Moon and Earth at the time of the launch of the rocket, the duration of the mission will be from three to six weeks.
In July 2019, Mike Pence, while serving as Vice President of the United States, said that the American lunar program assumes a permanent the presence of astronauts on a natural satellite of the Earth. At the same time, NASA reported that the Orion reusable spacecraft for the lunar mission Artemis 1 was ready.