Video: The launch of Orion

The Biden administration supports continuing NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts back to the moon, the White House said last week, without stating whether it will back away from the program’s already-in-doubt schedule for a lunar landing by the end of 2024.

Orbital ATK has cinched $188 million in contracts to complete development of the Orion crew capsule’s needle-shaped launch abort system, resuming work stalled in the wake up a major shakeup of NASA’s human spaceflight program by the Obama administration in 2010.

NASA is taking steps to rein in costs, emphasizing bonds with private sector companies, and signaling it might be open to a future where the agency’s flagship Orion deep space capsule and Space Launch System are no longer necessary to explore deep space, at least in their current forms.