NASA’s Artemis Launch Gives Boeing Chance to Restore Its Space Credibility

Aerospace company has long worked on NASA missions, but latest rocket has faced cost overruns and delays in recent years

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s scheduled test launch Monday of a new mega-rocket will give Boeing Co. another chance to prove it can pull off big national projects following past missteps.

Boeing is the biggest contractor for the agency’s Space Launch System, a 38-storey-tall rocket that is supposed to launch the Orion spacecraft without crew toward the moon—and in 2025 blast U.S. astronauts back there as part of NASA’s Artemis missions to explore space.

“We’re providing both the brains and muscle,” Boeing says on its website, “to make the next generation of human spaceflight possible.”

Boeing has a long history developing NASA vehicles and handling missions for the agency. The company helped deliver astronauts to the moon in the 1960s, and worked on Space Shuttle operations before that program ended more than a decade ago. It also provides support for the International Space Station for NASA.

Boeing’s space business has struggled more recently, including technical and management problems with the SLS. Stumbles with its separate Starliner spacecraft repeatedly delayed a flight for NASA, and that ship has lagged behind a competing vehicle from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

A successful SLS launch would help Boeing restore its reputation as it competes for government contracts and engineering talent with startups.

“The SLS is just another opportunity for us to show how well Boeing can do space,” said John Shannon, a Boeing vice president who oversees the SLS program for the company. “This vehicle can do something that no other vehicle can do, and we haven’t had a rocket like this in 50 years.”

Mr. Shannon added the company is confident that two of the big parts of the mission that Boeing engineers worked on—the main stage of the rocket used during liftoff, and a propulsion system designed to give Orion a big push in space toward lunar orbit—will function as planned.

The test launch of SLS and Orion without crew was supposed to happen four years ago, but Boeing and other contractors faced technical slip-ups and challenges the NASA inspector general has cited as among the sources of delays and cost overruns.

The belated test launch comes after problems Boeing has faced elsewhere in its commercial, military and space segments.

Three years ago, Boeing botched a test launch of its Starliner space capsule, sending it into the wrong orbit and failing to dock with the International Space Station. Subsequent technical problems delayed a do-over until a successful Starliner test launch earlier this year. The company has booked $767 million in charges related to that program over the past three years.

“We need Boeing to get this right,” said Scott Pace, a former NASA official who is director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “There’s a long history in recent years of Boeing’s technical problems, which they’re trying to fix—I sure hope they do, because it’s a national asset and it needs to work.”

Any major problems with this initial Space Launch System test launch could set back NASA’s planned Artemis missions to the moon. Two years from now, astronauts are scheduled to be on Orion as another SLS rocket launches it into space. And as soon as 2025, NASA wants SLS to propel astronauts to lunar orbit, where they would get on a SpaceX lander to travel to the lunar surface.

The missions could lay the groundwork for a possible future lunar base and an eventual operation to Mars, according to plans NASA has laid out under Artemis.

The overall project also involves aerospace companies including Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. Those contractors also have at times faced technical issues and delays flagged by the space agency’s inspector general. Lockheed Martin years ago dealt with challenges related to flight software and valves used for Orion, while Northrop Grumman, responsible for booster rockets on SLS, did so with insulation and avionics, according to reports from NASA’s inspector general.

Building and testing a new generation of exploration spacecraft that meet NASA’s stringent requirements has been challenging, with supply chains posing difficulties in recent years, said Mike Hawes, a vice president and program manager for Orion at Lockheed. Wendy Williams, vice president for propulsion systems at Northrop Grumman, said the company has incorporated lessons from building boosters for the first Artemis flight into the second, reducing timelines and costs.

The SLS program took shape amid political wrangling between the Obama White House and Congress in 2010. The project adapted technology from NASA’s now-ended Space Shuttle program to develop the world’s most powerful rocket capable of propelling humans and big spacecraft far into space. Some critics dubbed it the “rocket to nowhere” or the “Senate Launch System.”

Congress initially sought to launch SLS in 2016, but NASA early on saw the first mission happening in 2018. NASA Inspector General Paul Martin has estimated each of the first four Artemis missions will cost $4.1 billion, a figure he said is unsustainable.

Mr. Martin’s office had flagged Boeing miscalculations related to the scope of the project, welding problems and other troubles. “There was poor planning and poor execution,” he said in congressional testimony earlier this year.

Mr. Shannon, the Boeing manager for SLS, has said the company faced difficulties with the infrastructure at a Louisiana facility where NASA wanted the company to build the rocket. He said the company underestimated how long it would take to get its suppliers to provide needed parts.

“The aerospace supply chain for human spaceflight had really atrophied,” he said, citing the end of NASA’s Space Shuttle program years earlier for that. “We had to go in and really reinvigorate that supply chain.”

As of a year ago, Boeing and one of its joint ventures were awarded contracts worth about $12 billion over more than a dozen years for SLS work, according to a NASA inspector general report from November. Those deals represented 59% of the total contract value for the rocket program. Unlike with other government contracts, Boeing hasn’t booked any charges for SLS because many of its agreements with NASA are so-called cost-plus contracts, meaning taxpayers foot the bill for cost increases.

Mr. Shannon said the SLS program is profitable for Boeing but added: “We feel like we have a responsibility to provide good value to the taxpayer.”

As part of an attempt to reduce future SLS costs, NASA is planning to restructure the program’s finances. While the space agency offered few details, a NASA spokeswoman said the plan involved “creating a more affordable and sustainable exploration framework” in the future by “shifting more responsibility to industry.”

Boeing Chief Executive David Calhoun said recently he didn’t want to expose the company to significant financial risk with SLS. He told the trade publication Aviation Week: “I want to prove it all out to be ready, but I’m not going to do silly things, like lose money for 10 years.”

GENOA, Italy—Renato Zanelli crossed the finish line with a rusty iron hanging from his neck while pulling 140 pounds of trash on an improvised sled fashioned from a slab of plastic waste.

Zanelli, a retired IT specialist, flashed a tired smile, but he suspected his garbage haul wouldn’t be enough to defend his title as world champion of plogging—a sport that combines running with trash collecting.

A rival had just finished the race with a chair around his neck and dragging three tires, a television and four sacks of trash. Another crossed the line with muscles bulging, towing a large refrigerator. But the strongest challenger was Manuel Jesus Ortega Garcia, a Spanish plumber who arrived at the finish pulling a fridge, a dishwasher, a propane gas tank, a fire extinguisher and a host of other odds and ends.

“The competition is intense this year,” said Zanelli. Now 71, he used his fitness and knack for finding trash to compete against athletes half his age. “I’m here to help the environment, but I also want to win.”

Italy, a land of beauty, is also a land of uncollected trash. The country struggles with chronic littering, inefficient garbage collection in many cities, and illegal dumping in the countryside of everything from washing machines to construction waste. Rome has become an emblem of Italy’s inability to fix its trash problem.

So it was fitting that at the recent World Plogging Championship more than 70 athletes from 16 countries tested their talents in this northern Italian city. During the six hours of the race, contestants collect points by racking up miles and vertical distance, and by carrying as much trash across the finish line as they can. Trash gets scored based on its weight and environmental impact. Batteries and electronic equipment earn the most points.

A mobile app ensures runners stay within the race’s permitted area, approximately 12 square miles. Athletes have to pass through checkpoints in the rugged, hilly park. They are issued gloves and four plastic bags to fill with garbage, and are also allowed to carry up to three bulky finds, such as tires or TVs.

Genoa, a gritty industrial port city in the country’s mountainous northwest, has a trash problem that gets worse the further one gets away from its relatively clean historic core. The park that hosted the plogging championship has long been plagued by garbage big and small.

“It’s ironic to have the World Plogging Championship in a country that’s not always as clean as it could be. But maybe it will help bring awareness and things will improve,” said Francesco Carcioffo, chief executive of Acea Pinerolese Industriale, an energy and recycling company that’s been involved in sponsoring and organizing the race since its first edition in 2021. All three world championships so far have been held in Italy.

Events that combine running and trash-collecting go back to at least 2010. The sport gained traction about seven years ago when a Swede, Erik Ahlström, coined the name plogging, a mashup of plocka upp, Swedish for “pick up,” and jogging.

“If you don’t have a catchy name you might as well not exist,” said Roberto Cavallo, an Italian environmental consultant and longtime plogger, who is on the world championship organizing committee together with Ahlström.

Saturday’s event brought together a mix of wiry trail runners and environmental activists, some of whom looked less like elite athletes.

“We like plogging because it makes us feel a little less guilty about the way things are going with the environment,” said Elena Canuto, 29, as she warmed up before the start. She came in first in the women’s ranking two years ago. “This year I’m taking it a bit easier because I’m three months pregnant.”

Around two-thirds of the contestants were Italians. The rest came from other European countries, as well as Japan, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Algeria, Ghana and Senegal.

“I hope to win so people in Senegal get enthusiastic about plogging,” said Issa Ba, a 30-year-old Senegalese-born factory worker who has lived in Italy for eight years.

“Three, two, one, go,” Cavallo shouted over a loudspeaker, and the athletes sprinted off in different directions. Some stopped 20 yards from the starting line to collect their first trash. Others took off to be the first to exploit richer pickings on wooded hilltops, where batteries and home appliances lay waiting.

As the hours went by, the athletes crisscrossed trails and roads, their bags became heavier. They tagged their bulky items and left them at roadsides for later collection. Contestants gathered at refreshment points, discussing what they had found as they fueled up on cookies and juice. Some contestants had brought their own reusable cups.

With 30 minutes left in the race, athletes were gathering so much trash that the organisers decided to tweak the rules: in addition to their four plastic bags, contestants could carry six bulky objects over the finish line rather than three.

“I know it’s like changing the rules halfway through a game of Monopoly, but I know I can rely on your comprehension,” Cavallo announced over the PA as the athletes braced for their final push to the finish line.

The rule change meant some contestants could almost double the weight of their trash, but others smelled a rat.

“That’s fantastic that people found so much stuff, but it’s not really fair to change the rules at the last minute,” said Paul Waye, a Dutch plogging evangelist who had passed up on some bulky trash because of the three-item rule.

Senegal will have to wait at least a year to have a plogging champion. Two hours after the end of Saturday’s race, Ba still hadn’t arrived at the finish line.

“My phone ran out of battery and I got lost,” Ba said later at the awards ceremony. “I’ll be back next year, but with a better phone.”

The race went better for Canuto. She used an abandoned shopping cart to wheel in her loot. It included a baby stroller, which the mother-to-be took as a good omen. Her total haul weighed a relatively modest 100 pounds, but was heavy on electronic equipment, which was enough for her to score her second triumph.

“I don’t know if I’ll be back next year to defend my title. The baby will be six or seven months old,” she said.

In the men’s ranking, Ortega, the Spanish plumber, brought in 310 pounds of waste, racked up more than 16 miles and climbed 7,300 feet to run away with the title.

Zanelli, the defending champion, didn’t make it onto the podium. He said he would take solace from the nearly new Neapolitan coffee maker he found during the first championship two years ago. “I’ll always have my victory and the coffee maker, which I polished and now display in my home,” he said.

Contestants collected more than 6,600 pounds of trash. The haul included fridges, bikes, dozens of tires, baby seats, mattresses, lead pipes, stoves, chairs, TVs, 1980s-era boomboxes with cassettes still inside, motorcycle helmets, electric fans, traffic cones, air rifles, a toilet and a soccer goal.

“This park hasn’t been this clean since the 15 century,” said Genoa’s ambassador for sport, Roberto Giordano.

NASA’s Artemis Launch Gives Boeing Chance to Restore Its Space Credibility

At the World Plogging Championship, contestants have lugged in tires, TVs and at least one Neapolitan coffee maker