NASA’s Space Launch System has had a rocky start
NASA/Cory Huston
NASA is shaking up the plan for its Artemis moon missions. At a press conference on February 27, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced significant changes to the agency’s plans to send humans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
The Artemis II mission is due to launch in the next few months, but has had a couple of difficult training runs. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket continued to leak as fuel was pumped in, and it ended up being rolled back from the launch pad for analysis and repairs. The last time SLS was launched was in 2022.
Artemis II is a mission to send astronauts in a loop around the moon, in preparation for sending a crew to land on the lunar surface with Artemis III. That plan has now changed: Artemis III will no longer be a landing mission, but one to test the Orion crew capsule’s ability to dock with a lander in orbit, as well as the spacesuits for the eventual landing.
This may seem like a step back, but it comes with a plan to increase the frequency of launches. The new approach will see Artemis IV and possibly Artemis V land on the moon in 2028.
“The entire sequence of Artemis flights must represent an incremental build-up of capability, with each step bringing us closer to our ability to perform the landing missions,” NASA official Amit Kshatriya said in a statement. “Each step must be large enough to make progress, but not so large that we take unnecessary risks given previous learning.”
There were originally plans to upgrade the upper stage of the SLS rocket for future missions, but Isaacman announced at the press conference that NASA will now aim for a “standardized” version rather than making major changes with a few missions. “We’re not going to make every rocket a work of art,” Isaacman said during the press conference.
These changes mark a change in the overall philosophy of the Artemis program, thoroughly testing every part of the rocket and mission plan before each stage and taking small steps quickly rather than making big leaps every few years. Isaacman said he hopes this will eliminate the delays that have plagued Artemis from the beginning, and create a safer and more sensible lunar exploration program.
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