US delays mission to land humans on moon until Sep 2026, says Nasa

By Loren Grush

Nasa is delaying by about a year its long-awaited mission to land American astronauts on the moon, as the agency and its commercial partners grapple with mounting technical challenges associated with its Artemis program.
 

Pushing off the mission to September 2026 shows how the agency is struggling to meet ambitious deadlines and navigate the complications that come from relying on private firms like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to defense juggernaut Lockheed Martin Corp. 

“We are facing challenges, both technical and just dealing with going back to the moon, but the Artemis team is solving them,” Jim Free, Nasa’s associate administrator, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

The first lunar landing, a mission called Artemis III, was originally targeted for late 2025, Nasa said. The agency’s precursor mission, which aims to send humans to deep space and around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, is also being delayed, now planned for September 2025 instead of November 2024, the agency said.

Despite the delay, Nasa said the fall 2026 timeframe for Artemis III is still “very aggressive.”

Free pinpointed a range of issues including problems with Lockheed’s Orion capsule, which future astronauts will ride inside to get to deep space. After reviewing data from Orion’s flight during the Artemis I mission, engineers found issues with the vehicle’s heat shield and various internal components. 

Free also cited struggles with the development of new spacesuits and Musk’s Starship rocket — which relies on the unprecedented technique of transferring propellant between spacecraft in orbit.

To get to the moon, SpaceX’s Starship must be refueled multiple times in orbit, requiring back-to-back launches of Starship over a short period of time. However, SpaceX has yet to send Starship to orbit, so the company has been unable to start testing the vehicle’s ability to transfer propellant while in space. When asked how many Starship launches would be need to fuel a mission to the moon, SpaceX executive Jessica Jensen said “ten-ish.”

SpaceX expects to receive a Federal Aviation Administration license to stage its third Starship test launch in February, said Jensen, SpaceX’s vice president of customer operations and integration.