U.S. astronauts have been waiting. It’s been more than 50 years since the famed Apollo missions. On Thursday, NASA announced more delays in sending astronauts back to the Moon. The news pushes other lunar missions further out too.
Twenty-four astronauts flew to Earth’s Moon during NASA’s Apollo program from 1961 to 1972. A dozen of them landed on it. Apollo 17 in December 1972 left the final boot prints in the lunar dust.
NASA’s Artemis program is a follow-up to those Apollo missions. To date, Artemis has completed only one mission: The empty Orion capsule orbited the Moon in 2022. During that trip, the launch and lunar laps went well. But the capsule returned with an extremely charred and eroded bottom heat shield.
Engineers only recently identified the problem. The high temperature created at reentry damaged the heat shield. The engineers came up with a plan to fix the problem and will change the reentry path at flight’s end.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says NASA plans to use the same type of heat shield for the next two Artemis missions. The altered route should allow for a safe return.
NASA’s website calls Artemis I “the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration at the Moon and future missions to Mars.”
Next up for NASA and the Artemis program is Artemis II. That mission’s intent is to send four astronauts around the Moon and back without landing on the Moon’s surface. Nelson says Artemis II’s lift-off is now slated for April 2026. It had previously been pushed from 2024 to fall 2025.
The new date bumps the Artemis III mission—an actual landing on the Moon by two astronauts—from 2026 to at least 2027.
Artemis II’s commander is astronaut Reid Wiseman. He took part in Thursday’s news conference at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. His crew includes NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“Delays are agonizing, and slowing down is agonizing, and it’s not what we like to do,” Wiseman says.
But Wiseman told reporters he and his crew wanted the heat shield damage from the first flight to be fully understood—no matter how long it took.
For as high as the heavens are above the Earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him. — Psalm 103:11
