NASA announced significant changes on Friday to its Artemis lunar exploration program, restructuring upcoming missions and adjusting development priorities as the agency seeks to accelerate astronauts’ return to the moon following years of delays.
In a news release, NASA said it is adding an additional crewed mission focused on testing critical systems in Earth’s orbit before attempting a lunar landing, part of a broader update to the program’s architecture intended to increase cadence and reduce risk.
The Artemis program is central to NASA’s long-term goal of establishing a sustained human presence on the moon and preparing for eventual missions to Mars, and it faces a new sense of urgency as China inches closer to landing humans on the moon.
The program was established in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term, following his signing of Space Policy Directive-1 two years earlier.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the updates are intended to improve mission readiness and shorten the timeline between launches while maintaining safety standards for human spaceflight.
Under the revised plan, NASA will add additional testing milestones before attempting a crewed lunar landing, shifting the sequence of upcoming Artemis missions.
Isaacman said in a video posted on X that Artemis III, previously slated to land astronauts on the moon, will now focus on validating spacecraft operations, including docking procedures and integrated system testing, before astronauts attempt a surface mission on a later flight.
“With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives,” Isaacman said. “Standardizing vehicle configuration, increasing flight rate, and progressing through objectives in a logical, phased approach, is how we achieved the near-impossible in 1969, and it is how we will do it again.”
The launch schedule will speed up from every three years, which Isaacman said is not a sustainable strategy, to every 10 months.
As part of the restructuring, the lunar surface mission once planned for Artemis III will now take place under Artemis IV, targeted for 2028, giving NASA more time to validate spacecraft docking procedures and mission operations.
The announcement comes as NASA continues working through delays affecting the Artemis II mission, the program’s first crewed flight around the moon since the Apollo era. The Artemis II launch was originally slated for early February, but the rocket was removed from its launch pad on Wednesday.
WHAT IS THE NASA ARTEMIS PROGRAM?
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said the adjustments reflect lessons learned from earlier testing and past space programs.
“We are looking back to the wisdom of the folks that designed Apollo,” Kshatriya said. “The entire sequence of Artemis flights needs to represent a step-by-step build-up of capability, with each step bringing us closer to our ability to perform the landing missions.”
