Future of NASA’s mega moon rocket appears in doubt following major Boeing announcement

WASHINGTON – NASA’s mega moon rocket appears to be at crossroads following a major announcement by Boeing that it plans to significantly decrease the number of employees working on the project.

In an unexpected announcement made on Friday, the aviation giant said it was modifying the workforce of hundreds of employees devoted to the Space Launch System rocket.

"To align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations, today we informed our Space Launch Systems team of the potential for approximately 400 fewer positions by April 2025. This will require 60-day notices of involuntary layoff be issued to impacted employees in coming weeks, in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. We are working with our customer and seeking opportunities to redeploy employees across our company to minimize job losses and retain our talented teammates," a spokesperson told FOX Weather.

The SLS rocket was designated to replace the Space Shuttle program in 2011 and serve as the primary launch vehicle of the Artemis Moon landing program but has faced nearly a decade of delays and major cost overruns.

The first SLS rocket was expected to launch in 2016 but did not become airborne until late 2022.

Delays associated with the rocket’s development and questions surrounding its Orion spacecraft's heat shield have led to the postponement of what is known as Artemis II, a planned crewed mission around the Moon that was set to take place no earlier than 2026.

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Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has called efforts to return to the Moon a "distraction" and has advocated for a Mars-first strategy.

"No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction. Mass to orbit is the key metric, thereafter mass to Mars surface. The former needs to be in the megaton to orbit per year range to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars," Musk posted on the social media platform X in early January.

Musk’s advocacy to reach the Red Planet has continued despite increasing intentions by China to become only the second country to put humans on the Moon by 2030.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has been relatively tight-lipped about its future lunar activities, but former NASA leadership warned about the communist country’s ambitions.

"It is crucial for us to land on the lunar south pole to prevent ceding any portions of it to the Chinese," said then-current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson during an Artemis briefing in late 2024. "I wish that China could be someone that we could cooperate with, and maybe there will be an opportunity in the future. I hope so. But given them fact of the history of how the Chinese government has operated up until including recently, I don’t want that to occur on such an important part of the Moon."

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NASA did not immediately provide comment on the Boeing announcement or release guidance on any changes to its SLS rocket program or Artemis timeline.

Janet Petro, the current acting administrator, is overseeing the agency’s operations until Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead NASA, is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut is a close associate of Musk and has flown on two SpaceX missions.

SpaceX, for its part, has faced recent challenges, with its prized Starship spacecraft exploding over the southwest Atlantic during a test flight.

NASA had envisioned for the spacecraft to also play a key role in lunar missions, starting with Artemis III in late 2027, but without a crewed test launch planned, the timetable faces uncertainties.