NASA announced Friday a significant shift in its Artemis program, adding a crewed mission to lunar orbit to test docking procedures with a lunar lander before attempting a landing on the Moon, currently slated for 2028.
The change, explained by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, aims to increase the frequency of missions and improve the agency’s ability to address technical challenges as they arise. The Artemis program, a cornerstone of U.S. Space exploration, has faced numerous delays and technical setbacks in recent years.
“When you perform a launch every three years, your skills atrophy,” Isaacman said during a press conference from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “That is not the way to do it.”
The decision comes as NASA continues to grapple with delays to the Artemis II mission, which will send astronauts on a flyby of the Moon – the first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years. That mission was recently postponed again due to a technical issue with the rocket. The initial test flight of the program, Artemis I, took place in 2022 after years of delays and technical complications.
Competition Drives Schedule Change
The revised timeline is also influenced by increasing competition from China, which has its own ambitions to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030 and establish a lunar base. This move underscores the renewed space race and the strategic importance of lunar exploration.
To meet the 2028 target, NASA will “add missions” between the Artemis II flight, now scheduled for early April at the earliest, and the eventual lunar landing, Isaacman stated.
The Artemis III mission will now focus on a crewed orbital rendezvous with a lunar lander, developed by either SpaceX or Blue Origin, rather than a direct landing. The critical and high-risk lunar landing attempt will be deferred to Artemis IV and Artemis V, both currently planned for 2028.
Isaacman clarified that while the agency isn’t definitively committing to two launches in 2028, it wants to maintain the option. “We didn’t move right to Apollo 11,” he said. “We had a whole Mercury Program, Gemini—lots of Apollo missions before we ultimately landed right. Now, our program is essentially set up with an Apollo 8 and then going right to the moon. That is, again, not a pathway to success.”
The revised plan aims to mirror the approach of the Apollo program, which involved a series of increasingly complex missions to build experience and refine technology. During Apollo, as well as the preceding Mercury and Gemini programs, “our average launch cadence was closer to three months” than “three years,” Isaacman emphasized.
The Artemis program, initially announced during the first administration of Donald Trump, originally envisioned fewer missions with more ambitious goals. The program aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon and prepare for future missions to Mars.
However, the schedule remains subject to potential delays, due to challenges faced by NASA and its private partners, SpaceX and Blue Origin, which are developing the lunar landers. Last year, an independent panel of experts suggested that SpaceX’s modified Starship, intended for leverage as the Artemis III lander, could be “years” behind schedule.
