Nasa has postponed its plans to send humans to the moon after delays hit its hugely ambitious Artemis programme, which aims to get spaceboots bouncing again on the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.
The US space agency has announced the Artemis III mission to land four astronauts near the lunar south pole will be delayed a year until September 2026. Artemis II, a 10-day expedition to send a crew around the moon and back to test life support systems, will also be pushed back to September 2025.
Nasa said the delays would allow its teams to work through development challenges associated with the programme, which partners with private companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Lockheed Martin and uses some largely untested spacecraft and technology.
“We are returning to the moon in a way we never have before, and the safety of our astronauts is Nasa’s top priority as we prepare for future Artemis missions,” said the Nasa administrator Bill Nelson.
Washington wants to establish a long-term human presence outside Earth’s orbit, including construction of a lunar base camp as well as a space station that circles the moon. Its ultimate plans are to send people to Mars, but it has decided to return to the moon first to learn more about deep space before embarking on what would be a months-long voyage to the red planet.
Artemis I, the first mission of the programme, went ahead successfully in 2022, with Nasa launching the powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from Florida, carrying an uncrewed Lockheed-built Orion capsule on a 25-day, 1.3m-mile journey to the moon and back. It provided vital data for Nasa on what needed fixing, including the heat shield, part of which broke off.
The delay for the next missions will also give private companies, such as Axiom Space, which is designing the spacesuits, more time to develop their technology.
SpaceX is tasked with developing a lunar lander, which will fly to the moon without a crew and then meet astronauts into orbit, before taking them down to the surface. However, the company’s Starship system, the largest and most powerful rocket ever made, remains in early testing phases. Two flights have launched successfully but blown up at altitude, although SpaceX says “failure” is part of its development process, allowing the profit-making company to take risks that government space agencies seeks to avoid.
The new Nasa schedule “acknowledges the very real development challenges that have been experienced by our industry partners”, said Amit Kshatriya, the head of Nasa’s moon and Mars exploration strategy.
Eugene Cernan, who visited the moon in 1972, was the last person to walk on Earth’s nearest neighbour. The Artemis programme seeks to land the first woman and first person of colour on the lunar surface.
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman, a former Nasa astronaut and professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, said the delay was no surprise as there were still “a lot of things that have to be done”.
“Space X’s Starship, which is going to ultimately bring the crew … down to the surface of the moon. I mean, Starship is yet to reach orbit,” Hoffman, who made five flights as a space shuttle astronaut, told the BBC.
The astrophysicist said it was frustrating but not unexpected to see the delays, which he said were due to Nasa’s relatively tiny budget today compared with the space race of the 1960s and 1970s, when Washington sent humans to the moon for the first and last time on the Apollo programme.
“Nasa’s budget for Apollo was huge. We had 400,000 people working on the Apollo project and Nasa doesn’t have anywhere near that level or resources now,” he said. “They are not going to launch until they are ready because crew safety is paramount.”