CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA introduced extra delays Thursday in sending astronauts again to the moon greater than 50 years after Apollo.
Administrator Invoice Nelson mentioned the subsequent mission within the Artemis program — flying 4 astronauts across the moon and again — is now focused for April 2026. It had been on the books for September 2025, after slipping from this yr.
The investigation into warmth protect harm from the capsule’s preliminary check flight two years in the past took time, officers mentioned, and different spacecraft enhancements are nonetheless wanted.
This bumps the third Artemis mission — a moon touchdown by two different astronauts — to a minimum of 2027. NASA had been aiming for 2026.
NASA’s Artemis program, a follow-up to the Apollo moonshots of the late Nineteen Sixties and early Seventies, has accomplished just one mission. An empty Orion capsule circled the moon in 2022 after blasting off on NASA’s new House Launch System rocket.
Though the launch and lunar laps went effectively, the capsule returned with an excessively charred and eroded backside warmth protect, broken from the warmth of reentry. It took till just lately for engineers to pinpoint the trigger and provide you with a plan.
NASA will use the Orion capsule with its unique warmth protect for the subsequent flight with 4 astronauts, based on Nelson, however make adjustments to the reentry path at flight’s finish. To tear off and substitute the warmth protect would have meant a minimum of a full yr’s delay and stalled the moon touchdown even additional, officers mentioned.
Through the flight check, NASA had the capsule dip out and in of the environment throughout reentry, and gases constructed up within the warmth protect’s outer layer, officers mentioned. That resulted in cracking and uneven shedding of the outer materials.
“Delays are agonizing and slowing down is agonizing and it’s not what we like to do,” Wiseman mentioned. However he mentioned he and his crew needed the warmth protect harm from the primary flight to be absolutely understood, no matter how lengthy it took. Now they will focus with this “large decision behind us.”
Twenty-four astronauts flew to the moon throughout NASA’s vaulted Apollo program, with 12 touchdown on it. The ultimate bootprints within the lunar mud have been made throughout Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Nelson mentioned the revised schedule ought to nonetheless have the US getting astronauts again on the lunar floor earlier than China, which has indicated 2030 for a crew moon touchdown.
The house company has put all of the Artemis contractors, together with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, on discover to “double-down” to fulfill the schedule deadlines, based on Nelson. SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship — making check flights from Texas with growing frequency — is how astronauts will get from the Orion capsule in lunar orbit right down to the floor on the primary two Artemis moon landings.