The moon is just going to have to wait a little longer.
NASA is pushing its moon landing back a year to streamline its rocket production and workforce to improve safety, accelerate mission frequency, and better compete with China’s growing space program, announced NASA administrator Jared Isaacman on Friday.
The revamped schedule calls for standardizing its massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket configuration and aligning workforces with private contractors with an eye toward launching as frequently as every 10 months.
Artemis III, initially slated to return astronauts to the lunar surface next year for the first time since 1972, will instead conduct tests in low-Earth orbit to validate systems and operational capabilities ahead of an Artemis IV landing in 2028. These tests include rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, as well as in-space trials of life support, communications, propulsion systems, and Axiom Space’s new spacesuits. NASA also plans to use the mission to rebuild core strengths within its workforce, including more hands-on, side-by-side development with private partners.
The agency’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel report prompted the revamp, after flagging numerous safety concerns about an overambitious Artemis III that relies on too many novel technologies while attempting the first lunar landing at the South Pole. It also deemed the three-year gap between Artemis I and II too long to maintain skills and recommended smaller steps and more testing.
“When you are launching every three years, your skills atrophy, you lose muscle memory,” said Isaacman. “We’ve got a lot of really talented folks that have been working hard on the Artemis II campaign, and whether they’re going to want to stick around for three more years after this mission is complete is a question mark. This is just not the right pathway forward.”
The announcement comes amid delays to the Artemis II launch, caused by hydrogen leaks and helium flow issues that also plagued Artemis I, the uncrewed lunar flyby mission in 2022. Artemis II will carry astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day loop around the moon. Last week, NASA rolled the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs ahead of the next launch window in April.
NASA’s new architecture borrows from the Apollo era’s incremental learning and frequent launches. “We didn’t go right to Apollo 11,” said Isaacman, noting the initial Artemis schedule was like jumping from Apollo 8 to the moon.
“We are looking back to the wisdom of the folks who designed Apollo,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “The entire sequence of Artemis flights needs to represent a step-by-step build-up of capability. Each step needs to be big enough to make progress, but not so big that we take unnecessary risk given previous learnings.”
Artemis’ long-term goals are to establish a sustained presence on the moon and possibly send crewed missions to Mars. But a more immediate challenge is returning before China, which is targeting its first crewed lunar landing by 2030.
“With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives,” said Isaacman.