NASA on Friday announced a major overhaul to its Artemis back-to-the-moon program, a “course correction” that would include missions ahead of a planned lunar landing attempt in 2028 and speed up launches.
The Artemis III mission, which was set to land astronauts on the moon in 2028, will no longer shoot to the lunar surface, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said. Instead, NASA will try to launch Artemis III by mid-2027 to conduct important technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit, before launching Artemis IV in 2028 to land on the moon, Isaacman said.
The space agency will standardize the manufacturing process of the Space Launch System rocket and aim to launch a booster every 10 months instead of every three years.
“Everybody agrees this is the only way forward,” Isaacman said at a news conference. “And I will say, I’ve had similar conversations with all of our partners in Congress, and they’re completely behind NASA in this approach. I know how NASA changed the world, and NASA is going to do it again.”
The overhaul comes on the heels of another delay for the Artemis II mission, designed to send four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the moon. A hydrogen leak in the base of a Space Launch System rocket, revealed during a major fuel test, forced NASA to abandon all available launch opportunities this month. A second fuel test last week went smoothly, but engineers subsequently discovered a blockage in the flow of helium to the upper stage of the booster, which ruled out launch attempts in March.
NASA rolled the rocket from the launch pad at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to its hangar for repairs on Thursday. If that work proceeds as planned, Artemis II could launch as early as April, officials said.
