NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Thursday further delays in the American space agency’s program. Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972, pushing back the next two planned missions, including the moon landing.
Nelson told a news conference that the next Artemis mission, sending astronauts around the Moon and back, had been postponed until April 2026, with the landing mission planned for the following year. The delay occurred after NASA concluded a review of the Orion crew capsule, made by Lockheed Martin, and its heat shield, which malfunctioned upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere during a 2022 flight.
The Artemis program was created by NASA during the first administration of President-elect Donald Trump with the goal of returning astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the U.S. space agency’s Apollo 17 mission. The program aims to establish a lunar base as a step toward the more ambitious goal of human missions to Mars. The United States is estimated to spend approximately $93 billion on this program through 2025.
The Artemis program has made notable progress but has also experienced various delays and increasing costs.
In 2022, NASA carried out the Artemis I mission, a 25-day uncrewed journey around the Moon that ended when the Orion capsule carrying a simulated crew of three dummies made a successful splashdown in the Pacific. During its blazing atmospheric reentry, heat remained trapped inside the outer layer of Orion’s heat shield, causing cracks and sparking post-mission concerns about future designs of the capsule.
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Nelson said he and other top NASA officials concluded a heat shield meeting this week, facing a decision on whether to ask Lockheed to replace and upgrade the capsule’s heat shield Artemis II Orion, or to fly the capsule with the existing heat shield design, but modify its re-entry trajectory to ensure the same thermal cracking does not occur again.
The NASA chief said he and other officials unanimously decided to keep the heat shield as is and change Orion’s return trajectory for the next mission.
It was the first flight of NASA’s massive Space Launch System rocket, a powerful, over-budget vehicle tasked with launching humans into space aboard the Orion capsule. SpaceX’s Starship is under contract to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon.
The follow-up Artemis II mission, a flight carrying astronauts around the Moon to Orion but without a landing, has experienced delays, including one announced by Nelson in January pushing back its schedule to September 2025. Nelson said Thursday it would be longer long. postponed to April 2026.
The Artemis III mission is planned as the moon landing. Nelson said in January that the mission had been pushed back to September 2026. Nelson said it would now be mid-2027.
NASA uses SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other contractors for the Artemis program.
The Artemis astronauts’ journey to the Moon is planned as a relay between several spacecraft in space, first launched from Earth aboard Orion, then transferred into space to the Starship system to go and return from the lunar surface.
The United States and China, an ascendant power in space, are racing to land astronauts on the Moon. Both countries court partner countries and rely on private companies for their lunar programs.
The Artemis program was NASA’s top priority under Nelson. The program will rely heavily on SpaceX’s Starship rocket. Trump’s first NASA chief, former U.S. Congressman Jim Bridenstine, launched the Artemis program and persuaded Congress to increase the agency’s budget to fund it. Trump chose billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman, an associate of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, to succeed Nelson as head of NASA.
SpaceX hopes for rapid progress in Starship development under the second Trump administration, whose space program is expected to give the Artemis program a greater focus on the more ambitious goal of landing people on Mars, Elon’s first space aspiration Musk.