NASA has improved its plans for the Moon
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NASA has revamped plans for its Artemis program, meaning the mission that was intended to return astronauts to the Moon in 2028 will instead conduct test flights in low-Earth orbit next year.
The change comes just days after the US space agency canceled the launch of the Artemis II rocket due to some critical technical issues – delaying the four-person flight to the Moon until early April.
After that, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Friday, Artemis III will conduct a low-Earth orbit docking test between its Orion astronaut capsule and one or both of the new lunar landers — one from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the other from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
“So instead of going straight to the lunar landing, we will try to get into low-Earth orbit with one or both of our lunar landers,” he said.
NASA is still aiming for a lunar landing with Artemis IV in 2028.
Isaacman said NASA is hoping to launch missions more frequently, potentially every year or every 10 months.
NASA announced Friday that it is making changes to its Artemis lunar program, including a spacecraft docking test. NASA’s Jared Isaacman and Amit Kshatriya explain changes to the upcoming Artemis III and subsequent missions.
“Every three years is not the path to success,” he said. “Your skills have diminished, your muscle memory has been lost.”
“We have a lot of talented people working hard on the Artemis II mission, and, you know, whether they’ll want to stay for three more years after this mission is completed is a question mark. This is not the right path to move forward.”
Isaacman stressed that it is important for NASA to rebuild its civil servant workforce, as this will help complete launches more quickly.
He also said that when astronauts go into space outside the spacecraft, it will be important to test other components, such as the astronauts’ lunar landing suits and perhaps conduct extravehicular activity.
These changes and testing of various mission components are consistent with NASA’s early space programs, such as the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
“We didn’t go straight to Apollo 11,” he said, referring to the mission when astronauts first walked on the moon.
“We did this through Mercury, Gemini, and several Apollo missions with a launch cadence of every three months,” he said. “I would certainly like the astronauts to test the system, the lander, and the integrated systems of Orion in a lower-Earth orbit than the Moon.”
No other changes are planned for Artemis II, which could launch as early as April with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronauts Reed Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover.
