NASA postpones much-hyped manned lunar mission

Plans to send astronauts to the Moon have been pushed back until 2027

NASA has once again delayed two of its flagship projects aimed at taking humans back to the Moon, citing technical issues. The agency’s Artemis II and III missions are now expected to take place next year and the following year respectively, nearly two years later than initially planned.

Launched back in 2017, the Artemis mission was named after the Greek goddess of the Moon, the twin sister of Apollo. The agency opted to use the name in tribute to its historic effort to put the first man on the Moon in 1969, as the latest project intends to put the first woman on the lunar surface.

The Artemis program will use the partially reusable Orion spacecraft – produced by the US-based Lockheed Martin and European-based Airbus – as well the US-made Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.  

The US space agency said on Thursday that it had “done extensive testing to understand the risk that our astronauts will have while accomplishing the goals of landing back on the Moon.” It added that the testing had identified the root cause of the Orion heat-shield issues.

According to NASA, the Artemis II mission is now scheduled for April 2026, while Artemis III is expected to take place in mid-2027 at the earliest.

The agency’s original plan envisaged that two US astronauts, including a female, would set foot on the Moon as early as this year, more than half a century after NASA announced that astronaut Neil Armstrong had taken the first steps on its surface on July 21, 1969. The Artemis I and Artemis II missions stipulate that the Orion spacecraft will fly around Earth’s only natural satellite first in automatic mode, and then with a crew on board, prior to landing.

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The primary goal of the Artemis program is Moon exploration, although it also seeks to lay the groundwork for future missions to Mars, even if that prospect remains distant. As things stand, NASA plans to send a crewed flight to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

Commenting on the adjusted timeline, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said the mid-2027 goal “will be well ahead of the Chinese government’s announced intention” of landing Chinese astronauts on the Moon by 2030. Washington and Beijing, an ascending power in the space sector, are racing to land astronauts on the Moon with both courting partner nations and deploying private corporations for their ambitious projects.

Earlier this week, US President-elect Donald Trump nominated Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of payments company Shift4, who has led two private spaceflights and has conducted a spacewalk, to be the next head of NASA.