South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
NASA pushes Artemis III moon landing to at least 2025
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Tuesday a delay in the Artemis moon launch dates, including pushing the first return by humans to the lunar surface until at least 2025.
“After having taken a look under the hood for the last six months, it’s clear to me that the agency will need to make serious changes for the long-term success of the program,” Nelson said on a news media teleconference.
He said Artemis I, the uncrewed first flight of the Space Launch System and Orion capsule, is now targeted for February 2022. The rocket is stacked and ready for a wet dress rehearsal that will be on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in January.
Nelson, though, said that Artemis II, which had previously been targeted for 2023, and will be the first crewed flight of the program, now has a potential launch date of May 2024.
He said NASA’s updated spending plan for Orion through that flight since Fiscal Year 2012 is $9.3 billion, up from a previous baseline of $6.7 billion. Separately, development costs for the SLS rocket through the first flight in a few months remain at $11 billion.
Delays from COVID-19 were among the reasons NASA needs to lengthen the Artemis timeline. The sped-up timeline was enacted under the President Trump.
“The Trump Administration target of a 2024 human landing was not grounded in technical feasibility,” Nelson said.
Artemis III, which looks to put the first woman on the moon, will need the Human Landing System to be up and running, and it was only last week that a federal court ruled in favor of NASA in its choice to make SpaceX the sole contractor for it to be used on Artemis III.
The lawsuit brought by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin put a halt to discussions between NASA and SpaceX earlier this year.
“We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing, likely to no earlier than 2025,” Nelson said.
Nelson said that NASA plans on sending one more flight to the moon ahead of Artemis III, though, which will be an uncrewed test flight to the lunar surface.
He also reiterated that a future Human Landing System competition that expands beyond SpaceX, something members of Congress have stated they preferred, will require more money starting in 2023, to the tune of $5.7 billion over about six years.
And although Nelson said NASA would entertain alternatives such as SpaceX Starship for services to the moon in the future, for now, plans for up to 10 more lunar missions after Artemis III remain NASA’s focus.
“Right now there’s only one rocket that’s capable of doing this, and this is SLS with Orion on top,” Nelson said. “So we’re going with what we’ve got.”