The US’s plan to return to the Moon is delayed again. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced this Thursday at a press conference the new dates for its next lunar missions: Artemis 2 is postponed until no earlier than April 2026 and the Artemis 3 until mid-2027. Both missions suffer a new delay of almost a year with respect to the dates planned in the previous update from the US space agency, which had already announced another one-year postponement in its plans to land on the Moon.
NASA’s decision comes after an exhaustive investigation into unexpected behavior of the Orion capsule’s heat shield during its return to Earth. , which in July 2022 completed its unmanned flight to the orbit of the Moon. NASA has decided that the heat shield is adequate so that astronauts can travel in the capsule on the mission Artemis 2, But for its return to Earth to be sufficiently safe, Orion’s re-entry trajectory into the Earth’s atmosphere will have to be modified.
These changes by NASA, and the delay of its international and private partners in the development of the lunar landing module, various components and suits for the missions, have led Bill Nelson to make the decision to maintain the planned program, but delay it a little. year more. The first woman to step on the Moon during the mission Artemis 3 It will not do so in 2025, as the space agency announced after the success of the Artemis 1. Nor will it do so in 2026, as reported last January; and according to the plans revealed today, it will not do so before mid-2027 either. And that is if SpaceX manages to have a modified version of its Starship completed in time to land on the Moon.
After announcing the new dates for the lunar program, Nelson stressed that NASA still has room “to arrive before China,” which recently announced its next great space goal: taking its first astronauts to the Moon in 2030. The person in charge of the space program The American also stressed his commitment so that the United States not only returns to the Moon more than half a century later, but also to be the first country to take astronauts to the lunar south pole, where various studies have revealed the existence of important water reserves. The mission Artemis 3 will land in that region, while – according to Nelson – the Chinese space agency has not yet planned a manned mission to the south pole of the Moon.
In the hands of a Musk partner
Nelson’s announcement to maintain the program’s design Artemis With a delay of one year, it will be the last major decision of his mandate. It comes a day after Donald Trump announced who he will name as his successor when he begins his term in January 2025. The one chosen to be the new administrator of NASA is Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who made history last September by becoming . He achieved that milestone as mission commander Polaris Dawnfinanced by himself and operated by SpaceX with one of its Crew Dragon ships; and it was the second time that Isaacman led a flight for Elon Musk’s space company, with which he plans to carry out three more missions within the program Polaris.
Bill Nelson ruled out that the close relationship with Musk could lead Jared Isaacman as the next NASA administrator to cancel or modify the program Artemis. To repeated questions about this possibility, the still head of the US space agency stated in today’s press conference that “currently, there is only one space shuttle in the world that is qualified to take human beings from Earth to orbit.” of the Moon, and that is the SLS [diseñada por la NASA para el programa Artemis]” and recalled that to descend to the lunar surface the space agency has selected two landing ships: the Starship from SpaceX and the Blue Moon from Blue Origin. Nelson hopes that the Trump administration will maintain contracts with both private space companies: “I don’t think Starship is going to be used for everything. I don’t have that concern, although it seems like a legitimate question to me.”
Nelson was optimistic about NASA’s future during the new Trump administration; and specifically, under the mandate of technology magnate and private astronaut Isaacman. “I have congratulated him and invited him to come visit us when he passes through Washington,” said the still administrator, who hopes that the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk will be positive for the space agency: “It is to be hoped that this relationship will help “for NASA to get the funds it needs.”
When Jared Isaacman (41 years old) replaces Bill Nelson (82 years old) at the head of NASA in 2025, he will have to make the decision whether to maintain the program Artemis as it is or if it introduces any relevant changes to try to ensure that the United States beats China in the new space race to the Moon. For now, after learning of his nomination yesterday, Isaacman declared: “With the support of President Trump, I can promise this: we will never again lose our ability to travel to the stars and we will never settle for second place.” That phrase raised uncertainty about his confidence in the future of the current program Artemiswhich was born during Trump’s first term as president of the United States.
Even as a candidate, Trump had despised the idea of returning to the Moon; In December 2017, at the end of his first year as president, he signed the order that instructed NASA to send astronauts to the lunar surface in 2024 even though the United States did not have a space shuttle to do so; and in 2019, in some confusing tweets, he criticized the space agency’s plans to return to the Moon, claiming that “we already did that 50 years ago, we should focus on more ambitious plans.”
