Bridenstine to Newsmax: Artemis II Launch Shows 'American Greatness'

Jim Bridenstine, who served as NASA administrator in President Donald Trump's first administration, told Newsmax that Wednesday's planned launch sending astronauts to the moon marks a new display of "American greatness."

Launch preparations are in motion for the Artemis II mission. NASA's planned lunar fly-around by four astronauts would be the first moon trip in 53 years.

"This is a demonstration really of American greatness, and it's been a lot of work by a lot of people. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people," he told "Bianca Across the Nation" Wednesday.

"The whole world is going to watch, so there's a lot of interest in this mission," said Bridenstine, managing partner of The Artemis Group, a strategic consulting and lobbying firm he founded with his former chief of staff, Gabe Sherman.

Bridenstine said what is most compelling about the space mission is that it's leading the space program in a new direction.

"This time we're going to stay. We're going to learn to live and work on another world for long periods of time," he said.

"We're going to use the resources of the moon to live and work, and we're going to take all of that knowledge to Mars," Bridenstine said.

"We're going to launch our astronauts to do an orbiting mission, and when they come back, we're going to start preparing for eventually a lunar base."

Bridenstine said NASA and two commercial space programs are working together to develop a moon base and flight details to get astronauts back and forth from Earth.

Artemis II is the opening shot of NASA's grand plans for a permanent moon base. The space program is aiming for a moon landing near the lunar south pole in 2028.

"And so we're trying to go as fast as we can as a nation to get those astronauts ready and, of course, get our systems ready to go land on the surface of the moon," Bridenstine said.

"It's a very exciting time, and the future is very bright."

The 32-story Space Launch System rocket is poised to blast off Wednesday evening with a two-hour launch window beginning at 6:24 p.m. Eastern time at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will be on board.

They'll hurtle several thousand miles beyond the moon, hang a U-turn, then come straight back. The mission will not include orbiting the moon or a moonwalk, but will instead be a direct out-and-back trip lasting less than 10 days.

NASA promises more boot prints in the gray lunar dust, but not before a couple of practice missions.

NASA has the first six days of April to launch Artemis II before standing down until the end of the month. The Earth and moon must be aligned just so to achieve the proper trajectory for the mission to be successful.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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