NASA revamps its Artemis program, with new mission added before lunar landing
Posted on: Feb 27, 2026 22:51 IST | Posted by: Cbc
NASA is adding a young missionary post to its cynthia programme, import Artemis III will no longer head to the lunar surface, but instead focus on testing spacecraft in low-Earth orbit in 2027, before attempting to put humans back on the moon.
The shakeup comes just days after the U.S. Space agency rolled the Artemis II rocket back to NASA's Vehicle Integration Building (VAB) to fix some critical issues, though it says it is still aiming to launch four astronauts on a fly-by mission around the moon in early April.
On Friday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced that the next mission, Artemis III, will now involve a spacecraft docking test in low-Earth orbit.
"We are essentially going to pull in Artemis III to launch in 2027 with a revised mission profile," said Isaacman. "So instead of going directly to a lunar landing, we will endeavour to rendezvous in low-Earth orbit with one or both of our lunar landers."
The landers that NASA have contracted are from SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Isaacman said that the current launch cadence — launching a rocket once every three years — is unsustainable.
"Every three years is not a path to success. A component of that is when you are launching every three years, your skills atrophy, you lose muscle memory," he said.
"We've got a lot of really talented folks that have been working hard on the Artemis II campaign, and, you know, whether they're going to want to stick around for three more years after this mission is complete is a question mark. This is just not the right pathway forward."
However, the changes to the Artemis mission profile will still see NASA aim for a 2028 lunar landing.
More to come
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