Late last week, NASA announced that senior officials in charge of the manned space mission portfolio had been reshuffled amid growing impatience from President Donald Trump to hasten the return human beings to the lunar surface.

Axar.az reports citing BBC.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has explained why the US suspended its manned lunar program over 40 years ago and what it will take for the US manned space program to move forward.

"There's technical risk and then there's political risk. We would be on the Moon right now if it weren't for the political risk. We would be on Mars, quite frankly, by now, had it not been for the political risk," Bridenstine said.

"I'm talking about funding," the administrator clarified, saying Moon programs of decades past were made infeasible by their length and expense. "In the past, in the 1990s and the early 2000s we made efforts to go back to the Moon and on to Mars, but in each case, the program was too long and cost too much money," he said.

Now, he noted, President Trump has sought to accelerate the program "in order to retire the political risk."

Asked to comment on NASA's Artemis program, which seeks to create a new heavy rocket, space capsule and lunar lander for a new Moon mission just five years from now, Bridenstine said President Trump's goal was broader.

"So we want to go back to the Moon sustainably, in other words, to stay. But we also want to keep our eye on what is President Trump's goal? What is his vision? He wants to put an American flag on Mars," Bridenstine said.