Theyre going to be talking about International Cooperation in space. So youre asking it in very general terms and, of course, with all these agencies oef here, there are already activities going on in cooperation not only on the International Space station but also in other programs so there are bilateral and multilateral agreements. If you ask concretely about gateway, this is another question. And for that, we are looking we are meeting already since now, since two, three years, at least, working on it, and this is more important than just the agreements. The agreements is something which has to follow us, i hope. Jim . Thats right. So, you know, it starts with those of us up here working together to come up with the concepts that we think would work and then it ultimately ends with us taking it back to the Political Leadership of our countries or our organizations. The European Space agency, for example, has to go to its ministerial. Nasa has to go to the United States congress. And so we are working to make sure that at the end of the day, our programs get funded and were so its its kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. It takes some time to put it together, but all the pieces will come together. We just have to continue to work on it until they all come together. And so thats what all of us are working on right now. Oh, hello. Im a writer based in the uk. I have two questions. The first one for administrator bridenstine. I was so impressed and pleased and surprised to hear the announcement of u. S. Going back to the moon and landing on the surface by 2024. At the time, i thought, thats a tough call. Since then, ive been really impressed with what youve done in engaging the private sector and other International Partners and im a bit more hopeful that that will happen. So, question about how thats progressing, particularly on the funding. Are you getting all the support and the budget at the rate you need to hit that goal . We are confident that were going to get the resources necessary to achieve the end state. Right now, were operating under a very shortterm continuing resolution as the house has passed a nasa appropriation b l bill, that very good, by the way. It increases nasas budget. Now, they passed that bill the same week that nasa announced that we would like to we amended our budget requests so that we could go to the moon in an accelerated fashion. So, so they passed their bill, or they marked it up in committee the very week that we asked for the amended budget request. The senate has now marked up a bill thats very positive for an accelerated path to the moon. Its not everything that we asked for, but what we need to do is we need to get those two bills to agree in what we call conference and not just agree with each other but agree at the funding level that is necessary to accomplish the moon landing. So i think i think we are capable of getting the budget that is necessary. Im confident that it will happen. I would also say that as you mentioned, you know, one of the challenges with the timeline is not just budgetary. Its also process. The historical way by which nasa goes about acquiring these capabilities takes a long time. We put out an rfi. That takes six months. Industry spends six months responding to the rfi. We spend six months putting out an rfp. Industry spend six months responding to the rfp. Then industry spends a couple of years protesting the source selection. And at the end of the day, we spend three years before we get under contract. I dont know i mean, you guys can do the math. Its a long time. And and when we go fast, what that means is we got to do things differently, so instead of nasa purchasing, owning and operating the hardware, what were looking at doing is buying the service to get from the gateway down to the surface of the moon then back to the gateway. And that is what we have put out in what we call a Broad Agency Announcement. A baa. And right now, were in a blackout period about how those proposals are coming back. But i can tell you this, theres a lot of interest. And i think during the course of this week here at the International Astronautical congress, i think youre going to see a lot of announcements regarding Different Companies and organizations that are interested in going to the surface of the moon. So i think the timeline is still very achievable. I do think that, you know, we need to make sure that the budget is commensurate with the timeline and were working toward that every day. And as we work through it, domestically, were working with our International Partners to get as much International Support as we can in order to achieve the objective. The goal is to land on the moon within five years and to be sustainable with by the year 2028. When i say sustainable, thats where the gateway comes in. Its a reusable command module. We want reusable landers that can go back and forth from the surface of the moon to the reusab reusable. We need to drive down the cost for the oryan crew capsule, as time goes on, costs will come down. At the end of the day were trying to achieve a sustainable return to the moon where we have People Living and working on another world for long periods of time. Yeah, esm1 is already delivered. Esm3 is in the procurement phase. Were trying to from the european side to deliver as early as possible to make it possible. Thats right. On day one, the moon mission is international in nature on day one. We want to expand it from here for sure with more International Partners, but were very excited, and, in fact, as we make this sustainable, were going to need more European Service modules. So jan has his work cut out for him, too. Yeah. You bet. Mr. Werner, first, do you use the gateway to land european ast astroyacnauts on the moon . Is this part of the discussion . And some question for the other countries, also, for you, mr. Bridenstine, do you want to see other nonu. S. Astronauts use the gateway pane walk and walk moon, if so, whats the timeline . I think theres lots of room on the homoon. We need all our International Partners to go with us to the moon. Thats the vision. Thats what were trying to achieve. If we can come to agreements on the contributions of all the nations and how theyre going to be a part of the architecture then certainly i would see that thered be no reason we cant have all of our International Partners with us on the moon. I dont think we have to duplicate the descent module. We can Work Together, therefore, were in discuss also with nasa we have european astronauts on the surface of the moon. This is, of course, a european intention. This does not mean were starting to build our own human lander. This is is not necessary for that because its important that we have that we are doing it together. As i said, esm is something which brings us together to the gateway and then we are discussing right now how to go down to the surface. There is a plan also to have a european lander but not for humans at this moment. So, therefore, yes, we want to have europeans on the surface of the moon but in cooperation, in addition, were asking Member States in the space 19 plus for robotic landing systems in additio addition because we need both at the same time. Can i . Its a simple question to me. Jaxa would like to send a japanese astronaut onto the surface of the moon. So thats it. Yeah. For russian program, from the very beginning, we said that our primary goal would be the surface. Thats why we were kind of late joining Gateway Program because we were trying to optimize what is the best trajectory to fly and actually there are advantages and disadvantages of gateway trajectory, but we decided that most efficient way would be Work Together. We will do some parts of the system ourselves. Something we are planning to do for gateway, even Transportation System which we are going to build is going to be a joint system and the way we do it now for International Space station, we have several opportunities to send cargo. We, at this point we have one but in the future, well have several opportunities to send human humans and we did it before with shuttle. So we think like the redundant system, Transportation System, and one of the modules for gateway would be our participation in the program, and the way and how we will do this, we will decide a little later. Coming to india, this is a question of priority. As you know, we need to harness our capability. Bridenstine. Obviously it was clear the elephant in the room today was china, judging from all questions that were asked including questions coming over the internet. And their absence, of course, was recognized by everybody and is an important absence. Its also my question, however, is with regard to the formulation of Vice President of talking the United States taking the lead together with all the freedomloving nations of the world, obviously, chinas probably not included in that, but there may be other countries that are not included in that, either. And my question is, isnt this a significant change from how the Space Program has been dealt with by the United States ever since kennedy when his first his first thought was to Work Together with the soviet union to go to the moon, they refused and we went alone. But ever since then, there was an attempt to use space as a means of bringing countries together, not of separating them. But the formulations of the Vice President today were pretty strident in many peoples ears and i was wondering, is that a shift in policy now and what would the United States be willing to work with china on . Have we gone a step further from the wolf amendment now . Were not going to work with them at all on space . Or what does that actually mean . So your point on the wolf amendment is right on. We are prohibited by law from working with china in a bilateral sense on Space Exploration by the wolf amendment which every year gets reappropriated in an appropriations bill. As far as cooperation in space, i think space does represent that unique opportunity to bring nations together that historically dont come together. I would tell you im sharing this stage with russia and there is no doubt, we are aware that we have terrestrial disputes that are very clear and transparticipatran transparent and everybody sees them. When if cot comes to cooperate the International Space station, our relationship is very, very strong, it has been strong and we want to keep it strong. Of course, we would like to extend it even further. All this i think is whats unique about space. I would also say that when we think about the future, we do need to be careful about things like the theft of intellectual property. We need to be careful about the, you know, how we go about bringing new partners in that ultimately could be more harmful than helpful in the future. And i think thats probably what the Vice President was referencing in his speech today. Hi. Irene with aviation week in space technology. For every for all the agencies aside from the United States, im familiar with our position, but what is the balance between requests to continue funding of iss past 2024 with the desire to move into deep space human exploration . And also for mr. Krikalev, whats the status of the launch of the mlm to the iss . Thanks. Yeah, ill let you start. I will start from there. Mlm is going to be launched at the end of next year and beginning of next year its going to be delivered for final test and preparation. As for compromise between iss and the future exploration, for sure, we are not going to abandon lowearth orbit. Were estimating what is the most efficient way to stay on lowearth orbit . And we had several project like free flier modmodules. We have thoughts about separate russianbuilt station, but finally, looking through all different options we found continue what were using now is most efficient, so iss is a great asset. We spend a lot of efforts in the time and expertise to build it together and actually i think its really a remarkable result we have. Not only technically, but organizationally. We learn how to Work Together. How to deal together. And i think at this point, if were going to stay on lowearth orbit, iss is the most efficient way to do that. So but it doesnt prohibit us from field exploration. We are trying to do exploration as much as possible and as i said, we are trying to determine scale of our participation in exploration, but we are going to participate for sure. So we are proposing to im proposing to the Member States in five weeks time what we call a European Exploration Envelope Program and this Program Covers several areas. It covers the iss as well as the gatewa gateway. We dont see its either or. Exactly what sergey is saying, we need both. We need lowearth orbit, microgravity research, for many purposes and, of course, the iss has a geopolitical value which we should not underestimate and, therefore, we believe we should continue that. There will be an end of iss at a certain point, and we are thinking about that as well. First of all, we need lowearth orbit experiments even afterwar afterwards. At the same time, we also need joint activities because the geopolitical value is so high, so, therefore, at this time, we dont see either or but both, and we are looking to the future to see how it develops. Can i Say Something . I think the International Exploration program is not to abandon iss or not to abandon the deal, region, but to expand the boundary of the humankind activity to from real to the whole earth system. The same kind of discussion is happening right now in japan. Between iss and the exploration. But, anyway, the importance, the value, would not change, so we will have to be at the lowearth orbit, but the players will be might be changed because not only government but also many more private sectors will join us. And the other thing is that the iss and beyond iss, anyway, that area can be used for the innovation for the future exploration on earth. On the moon. And i would say, krikalev, did you have Something Else . I should say sergey. I would just add a little bit that iss is an exploration because we have a lot of activities on iss now that is working for exploration. We do some experiments, some tests and thats part of exploration program. I think one thing that all of us on this stage need to be considering all the time is what comes next because i dont think any of us want to see a day when we dont have humans in lowearth orbit, and right now the International Space station is that capability and all of our nations now working together for almost 20 years and maybe some additional partners in the future, weve been able to keep that going. Heres whats important to note, though, and i think jan mentioned this just a few seconds ago, we know it cant last forever. How long can it last . We still dont know. Its looking good right now but we know it cant last forever. We need to be thinking today about what comes next. I think there are two lines of effort that are going to make a big difference. One is industrialized biomedicine. So right now, we, the United States segment, we are using the International Space station i know our partners are as well to work on two specific lines of effort. One is industrialized biomedici biomedicine. The other is advanced materials. So when it comes to compounding of pharmaceuticals or creating immunizations, these are capabilities that will be tra transformational for humankind here on earth. When we talk about creating, right now were trying to prove we can create human tissue on three dimensions on the International Space station on a way you cannot do in the gravity well of earth because the tissue would just go flat. In other words, were trying to prove we can print in 3d human organs on the International Space station. Again, what were trying to do is use the International Space station for those transformational capabilities here on earth that ultimately result in capital flows going into habitation in lowearth orbit. The commercialization of habitation of lowearth orbit. That has to be the goal if were going to keep a 1. 0 presence of human habitation in lowearth orb orbit. In order to achieve in order to achieve that, were going to have to have commercial resupply be successful which it already has been. Were going to have to have commercial crew be successful which its about to be. Knocking on wood. Of course, were going to need commercial habitation. Now, nasa will always have a presence in lowearth orbit, but we want to be the customer. We want to be one customer of many customers and we want to have numerous providers that are competing on cost and innovation. And, of course, we want to be there with International Partners and we want our International Partners to also have commercial capabilities in lowearth orbit aswell. So i think theres a robust marketplace. I think were really about three to seven years away from just one c