Artemis gets an extra step
NASA has laid out a revised path back to the lunar surface: a test flight in 2027 and a crewed landing in 2028. The agency said Artemis III, once planned as the landing, will now fly without touching down. Artemis IV will carry astronauts to the surface, launching on the Space Launch System rocket with the Orion capsule from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The reordering adds a mission but shortens the gap to a landing, agency officials argue, because it lets crews practise docking and life support in lunar space before the descent.
Two landers, two upper stages
SpaceX and Blue Origin are both building landers. NASA said both companies have redesigned their vehicles to simplify the missions and make them more efficient and flexible than earlier designs. Both are targeting the ability to support a crewed landing in 2028, which gives the agency two routes to the surface rather than one.
For the rocket, NASA is keeping two upper-stage options: the current interim cryogenic propulsion stage and a stretched version of ULA's Centaur V, which carries more propellant. Paying for both costs money, but it protects the schedule if one runs into trouble.
A race with a deadline attached
The plan is also a message to China, which runs its own crewed lunar programme and has been testing a lander. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has framed the schedule in those terms. A landing in 2028 would be the first since Apollo 17 in 1972, nearly six decades earlier.
Much still depends on hardware that has not flown: the landers, the stretched stage and the suits astronauts will wear on the surface. NASA has published schedules before and missed them. This time the agency has built in a spare mission, which buys margin at the cost of one more launch to pay for.
The agency has also been buying more commercial cargo deliveries to the surface, so instruments and supplies can be pre-positioned before crews arrive. That work continues whether or not the crewed schedule holds.