Jared Isaacman said the search for alien life sits at the center of what NASA does, even as the Artemis II crew circles the moon on the first lunar mission since 1972.
Speaking Sunday, the billionaire astronaut said asking whether humans are alone is part of every scientific and exploration effort at the agency. He said the work is about trying to unlock the secrets of the universe, and pointed to a possible moon base at the south pole that could one day include telescopes to keep scanning for signs of life beyond Earth.
His comments came four days into the Artemis II flight, when the four-member Orion crew woke on Saturday at 110,700 miles from the moon and 169,000 miles from Earth. The spacecraft was expected to swing around the moon’s far side on Monday evening and head back toward Earth for a Friday landing.
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Isaacman said astronauts know how to handle the communication blackout that comes when the spacecraft passes behind the moon. He said the first objective now is to gather data from Orion’s life support system, adding that this is the first time humans have been on board the capsule and that NASA wants to collect as much information as possible about it. “Learning as much as we can about Orion is critically important,” he said.
The emphasis on testing matters because NASA is already looking beyond this flight. Artemis III is scheduled for launch in mid-2027 and is expected to test the same spacecraft with lunar landers. Artemis IV is planned for 2028 and would use the spacecraft to transfer crew to the landers and put American astronauts back on the moon’s surface.
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Isaacman also said the question of alien life is not abstract. He said he had been to space twice and had not encountered any aliens, and had seen nothing to suggest humans have been visited by any intelligent life forms. Still, he said the odds of finding something that points to life elsewhere are “pretty high,” given the scale of the cosmos and the roughly 2tn galaxies it contains.
That broad search comes with one very practical reality: Orion itself still has to perform. NASA said it was able to fix the spacecraft’s $30m titanium vacuum-based Universal Waste Management System toilet after the crew reported a blinking fault light. The repair was another reminder that the mission’s most advanced science is running alongside the basics of keeping astronauts comfortable and safe.
For now, Artemis II is doing what NASA wanted it to do — carry people around the moon, gather data, and lay the groundwork for what comes next. Isaacman’s answer to the larger question was just as direct: if there is life out there, NASA’s work is built to find it.
