NASA, under new administrator Jared Isaacman, has announced massive changes to its Artemis program, including delaying the first crewed Moon landing since 1972, as aspirational space travel goals come back down to Earth.
With Elon Musk pushing back Mars goals in favor of focusing on establishing a foothold on the Moon, and now NASA pushing back crewed lunar operations, criticism has arisen as the optimistic space exploration goals of recent years have failed to materialize.
However, NASA says this Artemis delay will only serve to support an increased operational cadence in the future as the US space agency builds up its capabilities.
NASA’s New Artemis Timeline
With experience as an aviation entrepreneur and having financed and flown two space missions himself, Isaacman is a unique pick to head the agency through its ambitious plans. He’s heading up an agency seeking to reclaim the public glory of the Apollo days through the Artemis program, while operating with a smaller proportional budget and juggling many more orbiters, landers, probes, space stations, and assorted projects than the agency had in the 1960s and 70s.
Officially established in 2017, the Artemis program first took flight in 2022 with the Artemis I mission, testing the uncrewed SLS and Orion spacecraft. Artemis II has been scheduled for this year and will consist of a crewed lunar flyby, which will test optical communications with Earth, study the health effects of space travel, and launch a secondary payload of cubesats.
The big change in the timeline is a revision of Artemis III, which had been planned as a crewed lunar landing in the Moon’s south polar region. While there for a week, astronauts were to sample frozen lunar water ice. Instead, the 2027 mission will now consist of a low Earth orbit mission to test lunar landers, docking systems, and life support, with a crewed moon landing no sooner than Artemis IV in 2028.
NASA says that, along with investments in its workforce, these additional tests will improve safety and enable an increased operational tempo in the future. Most notably, they are targeting two landings in 2028 and increasing the number of launches from one every three years to one launch every ten months.
A Pivot for NASA’s Artemis Program
These changes were met with mixed reactions from the public, with some considering the branding of the new plan a disappointing delay disguised behind PR promises of more launches in the future
“NASA did not announce a delay of any kind today,” NASA spokesperson Cheryl Warner told The Debrief. “In fact, the agency is increasing its cadence of missions under the Artemis program in order to achieve the national objective of returning American astronauts to the Moon and establishing an enduring presence.”
“This includes standardizing vehicle configuration, adding an additional mission in 2027, and undertaking at least one surface landing every year thereafter,” Warner said.
“While the recent shakeup in the Artemis program may not have been absolutely necessary, I think it is a sound decision,” Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine and author of NASA/JPL’s Technology Highlights, told The Debrief. “Isaacman has inherited a lunar landing initiative that has been somewhat inconsistently supported since it was first announced, and some corrective action was not entirely unexpected.”
While some may be disappointed in the lack of a landing next year, they also note that pivoting the plan on such a short timeline is no easy feat. So, how is NASA going to change gears so close to launch?
“NASA has the best and brightest workforce in the federal government, and these are challenges we gladly accept,” said a NASA spokesperson last week. “While safely launching and flying Artemis II is our top priority, planning is already underway to transition the workforce to support the updated architecture plans.”
In an email to The Debrief, Warner added that “As NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has said, our agency is capable of taking on multiple world-changing endeavors, especially when approached in a logical evolutionary way.”
“Apollo 8 flew around the Moon just over two months after Apollo 7 completed its mission,” Warner notes.
The Long Haul
“There has been a sense of frustration with the pace of Artemis—even though it was only officially announced by the Trump administration in 2019, it was conceived in 2017, and parts of the lunar landing ‘stack’ had been in development since George W. Bush’s Constellation Program from 2004,” Pyle told The Debrief. “In any case, many felt that, despite its slow pace, the Artemis program was rushing, especially recently.”
This, in part, relates to concerns such as the issues that arose with the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield, which wore away faster than expected in tests. A redesign is in the works, but it will not be complete until after the Artemis II launch.
Another challenge Artemis faces, which was not a concern for Apollo, is that the lunar lander will be launched separately. SpaceX’s Starship-based Human Landing System remains behind schedule, and necessary orbital refueling capabilities have yet to be addressed. However, Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Lander, which is pursuing a more calculated development approach than the try-fail-try methods of SpaceX, may make the 2027/8 deadline.
“With the lunar lander running late—as it did during the Apollo program—it made sense to perform at least one orbital flyby with Orion—an orbiting variant of which was Apollo 8 in 1968—which is Artemis 2,” Pyle explained. “Besides keeping the program on track, this flight provides a test run for Orion’s life support system and the Orion’s service module, among other tech.”
“Artemis 3 is now scheduled as an Earth-orbital flight to test whichever lunar lander is ready in 2027—a pathway similar to 1969’s Apollo 9 flight, which tested the Apollo capsule and the new Lunar Module in extensive rendezvous, docking, separation, and maneuvering tests,” Pyle continued. “This is, I think, what Isaacman was referring to when he discussed the legacy and lessons of Apollo. Then Aremis 4 and possibly 5 would follow with lunar landings in 2028/2029.”
The New Space Race
While a 2028 landing pushes NASA’s return to the Moon ever closer to China’s 2030 landing goal, the agency says the US will still be first in the current space race.
“With an increased cadence of lunar missions, NASA will maintain U.S. superiority in space exploration, including ensuring America’s timely return to the surface of the Moon—but this time, to stay,” Warner said.
“It’s my personal opinion that while China has claimed its intention to land their citizens on the moon by 2030,’ it will occur in 2029, which will be the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, an immensely powerful internal PR stunt they will likely take risks, if necessary, to accomplish,” Pyle said.
“Notably, their lunar landing program is currently ahead of ours in terms of successful design, build, and test,” Pyle added. “Their initial landings will be quick ‘land, walk, and grab samples’ reminiscent of Apollo 11, but make no mistake—China is in this for the long haul and does not suffer the political vagaries, twisting levels of support, and priority shifts inherent in American politics.”
For now, as NASA redraws its plans, the race for dominance of outer space is tightening, as perhaps overly optimistic goals presented during the Artemis proposal stage are giving way to the challenges of real-world engineering.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.