NASA overhauls Artemis program, delaying Moon landing to 2028
NASA is making major changes to its Artemis Moon program. On Friday, Administrator Jared Isaacman announced that the space agency would conduct an additional flight in 2027 to test commercial lunar landers from SpaceX and/or Blue Origin. The new mission will replace Artemis 3, which would have previously seen NASA attempt to land on the Moon for the first time since 1972. The flight will also see the agency test a new spacesuit made by Axiom Space.
Under the new plan, the redesigned Artemis 3 mission will give NASA the ability to test at least one lander in the relative safety of low Earth orbit. NASA will attempt to return humans to the Moon during Artemis 4 sometime in 2028, with the possibility of another mission as early as later that same year. By CBS NewsThe decision comes after NASA’s Aerospace Security Advisory Plan said the agency’s existing mission plan was too risky.
“NASA must standardize its approach, increase the pace of flight safely, and implement the President’s National Space Policy. With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary growing by the day, we must move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our goals,” Isaacman said. “Standardizing vehicle configuration, increasing flight tempo, and progressing toward objectives in a logical, incremental approach is how we achieved the impossible in 1969 and how we will do it again.”
The change of plans also comes as Artemis 2 has faced multiple delays in recent months. The Space Launch System (SLS) heavy rocket has once again proven to be capricious. NASA had planned to launch Artemis 2 in early February, but pushed back the flight after detecting a hydrogen leak during a refueling test. More recently, NASA delayed the mission to give its engineers time to resolve a problem pressurizing helium in the SLS upper stage. At the earliest, the mission can start on April 1.
