Crew members of the US space agency NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, from left, Reid Wiseman Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, at a press event at the ArianeGroup building.
Hauke-Christian Dittrich | Image Alliance | fake images
NASA is pushing back the schedule for the next missions of its Artemis lunar program by about a year, as the agency’s contractors work to finish the technology needed to return American astronauts to the surface of the moon.
“We are adjusting our schedule to target Artemis 2 for September 2025 and September 2026 for Artemis 3, which will send humans to the lunar south pole for the first time,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
Artemis 2, with a crew of four, which NASA announced last spring, was previously planned to launch in November, while Artemis 3 was targeted for December 2025.
The pair of missions will follow the unmanned Artemis I mission that flew in 2022. The Artemis program represents a series of missions with increasing objectives, aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo era.
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Nelson’s comments confirm reports from CNN and Reuters that NASA would delay the program’s schedule. Delays to Artemis have long seemed likely, especially after NASA’s Inspector General detailed challenges with the program’s crucial infrastructure in a report late last year.
Artemis relies on a variety of vehicles and equipment manufactured by companies including boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Spatial axiom and RTX Collins Aerospace is also developing lunar spacesuits to support the program.
But many of those companies still face obstacles, either with development or technological setbacks, such as problematic batteries in Lockheed’s Orion capsule and problems demonstrating in-space refueling with SpaceX’s Starship. NASA’s Artemis effort has already been delayed for years, and the program is billions over budget.
NASA has spent more than $42 billion since 2012 to develop and build the systems behind the Artemis program, and the agency’s Inspector General noted that the initial missions will cost $4.2 billion per launch.
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