WTF NASA?

NASA Mission Control Houston reported on the morning of 9 April, "the Artemis II mission is 143,000 statute miles from earth and 133,000 statute miles from the moon and is travelling at 2800 miles per hour".  Presumably that is 2800 statute miles per hour.

They continued with "As Artemis II approaches reentry at 400,000 feet it will be travelling at approximatley 35,000 feet per second and will be downrange 1500 nautical miles".

What?  Now we're using nautical miles?  Is that why Artemis is now travelling at feet per second because you can't decide on statute or nautical miles?  Who or what else uses feet per second?  Not your typical American and not aircraft as they use knots and the really fast ones use Mach (Mach 32 in the case of Artemis II).

I realize sea vessels and aircraft use feet and nautical miles and knots, but for what reason is distance out of the ocean and atmosphere (i.e. space) using statute miles?  Why the change?  What's the excuse?

If you silly Americans insist on using the archaic Imperial system, why not embrace it?

How about "Artemis II is 50,000 leagues from Earth and the mission time is 0.62 fortnights?  It will enter the atmosphere at an altitute of about 600 furlongs and will travelling the length of 45 football pitches per second".

You can guess if the football pitich is English or NFL (it's similar to the difference as between statute vs nautical miles).