NASA delays Artemis 2 moon mission to 2026, Artemis 3 astronaut landing to mid-2027

[LazyHippo]

NASA's uncrewed Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft takes a selfie near the moon in November 2022. (Image credit: NASA)

 

 

NASA announced (Dec. 5) that it's delaying the planned launch of Artemis 2, a flight that will send four people around the moon and back, from September 2025 to April 2026. And Artemis 3, a crewed moon landing that had been targeted for late 2026, is now scheduled for mid-2027. The extra time is needed primarily to finish prepping the Orion capsule for its first-ever crewed flights, according to NASA officials.

 

"Space is demanding," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference today. "And we, and our industry and international partners, need this time to make sure that the Orion capsule is ready to safely deliver our astronauts to deep space and back to Earth."
 

Orion has two flights under its belt to date — a brief jaunt to Earth orbit in 2014 and the 25-day-long Artemis 1, an uncrewed test mission that sent the capsule to lunar orbit and back to Earth in late 2022.

 

Everything appeared to go well on Artemis 1. However, postflight analyses revealed that Orion's heat shield wore away more unevenly during its reentry to Earth's atmosphere than engineers had predicted. Temperatures inside Orion remained near room temperature, meaning that astronauts would have remained safe, had any been aboard. But engineers needed to figure out what happened — and they've now come to some conclusions, NASA officials announced.

Edited December 8, 2024 by LazyHippo