(CN) — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other officials announced Tuesday that the space agency will delay its flagship Artemis II and III crewed missions to the moon, citing technical issues and safety concerns.
"Safety is our top priority," Nelson said in a press call on Tuesday afternoon. "And to give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges with first-time developments, operations and integration, we're going to give more time on Artemis II and III."
This past March, NASA announced it was targeting a November 2024 launch for Artemis II, a 10-day crewed flight around the moon and back without landing. But Nelson said Tuesday the new launch target for Artemis II is September 2025. He also announced Artemis III, which would be NASA's first crewed moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, saw its launch target pushed back from late 2025 to September 2026.
Artemis IV, another moon landing slated to coincide with construction of the planned "Lunar Gateway" space station in lunar orbit, "remains on track" for a September 2028 launch, Nelson said.
Despite the delays, the new launch targets for Artemis II and III may still be overly optimistic, according to a November 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. That report, citing issues with NASA's commercial partners Axiom and SpaceX, found that the Artemis III moon landing would likely not take place until early 2027.
Axiom, which won a $229 million NASA contract in September 2022 to develop a new generation of lunar space suits for Artemis astronauts, is still working out issues with the suits, especially the life support systems. The changes are also subject to NASA review.
SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, won a $2.9 billion contract from NASA in April 2021 to develop its Starship rocket into a "human landing system" which can ferry crew and cargo to and from the lunar surface from orbit. The vehicle plays a key part in the Artemis III and IV missions, but the rocket development has faced numerous setbacks. Both Starship orbital test flights in 2023 ended in failure.
"We found that if the Human Landing System development takes as many months as NASA major projects do, on average, the Artemis III mission would likely occur in early 2027," the GAO report states.
So far NASA has only successfully conducted one mission in the Artemis program, officially established in 2017 and named for the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt and Apollo's twin sister. The Artemis I mission successfully launched on Nov. 16, 2022, carrying an Orion crew vessel developed by NASA, Lockheed Martin and Airbus Defense and Space into lunar orbit for six days. The craft then left lunar orbit and returned to Earth, splashing down off the Pacific coast of Baja California on Dec. 11, 2022.
In the meantime NASA and its international partners have faced stiff competition in the new space race from China, India, Russia and private spaceflight organizations. India, via its Indian Space Research Organisation, became the first nation to land a spacecraft near the moon's south pole in August 2023 with its Chandrayaan-3 lander, while Russia's Roscosmos launched a lunar probe that crashed into the moon's surface the same month.
No private company has yet managed to land its own vehicles on the moon, though several have tried. A coalition of commercial interests attempted a moon landing just this past week, with the U.S.-based United Launch Alliance launching a lander developed by another U.S.-based company, Astrobotic Technologies, on Monday. ULA's Vulcan rocket managed to carry Astrobotic's Peregrine moon lander to space, but the Peregrine's propulsion system malfunctioned and put a moon landing out of reach.
China's Chang'e 4 and Chang'e 5 missions, in early 2019 and late 2020 respectively, were more successful. The Chang'e 4's Yutu 2 rover was the first human craft to successfully land on the dark side of the moon, while Chang'e 5 was the first unmanned vehicle to return lunar samples to Earth since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 sample-return mission in 1976. Chinese officials also stated in 2023 that the country hopes to carry out a crewed moon landing by 2030.
Despite the competition, Nelson said he is confident that astronauts sent by NASA and its partners, rather than international competitors, would be the first humans to set foot on the moon since Apollo 17.
"With us landing in September of 26, that will be the first landing," Nelson said.
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