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