ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA is changing course on its Artemis lunar program, postponing a planned astronaut landing and revising the sequence of missions to accelerate the schedule and reduce technical risk.
Under the new plan, Artemis III will no longer attempt a lunar landing. Instead it will launch and remain in Earth orbit to practice rendezvous operations with the program’s lunar landing system. Landings would be shifted to Artemis IV and V, which would carry astronauts to the Moon using lunar landers being developed by commercial partners SpaceX and Blue Origin.
The decision follows repeated technical problems with NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. Artemis II, the crewed mission that would carry four astronauts, remains grounded at Kennedy Space Center after teams detected issues with the SLS helium pressurization system and a liquid hydrogen leak. Artemis I, the uncrewed test flight in November 2022, faced similar troubles ahead of its launch, prompting agency leaders to reassess processes.
“This is just not the right pathway forward,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at a Kennedy Space Center news conference. He cited the long gap of more than three years between Artemis I and Artemis II and said recurring issues between launches require “a close look at your process for remediation.”
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya described the change as a way to increase momentum and focus execution on the right objectives. Agency leaders said the revised approach borrows from Apollo-era architecture, which used staging and in-orbit operations to support surface landings.
To support a faster cadence — Isaacman has expressed a goal of launches roughly every ten months — NASA plans to standardize the SLS design and limit changes to its upper stage beginning in 2028. The agency also intends to grow its workforce, shift some contractor roles to federal employees, and press SpaceX and Blue Origin to speed development of their lunar landers.
Meanwhile, engineers rolled the Artemis II rocket and Orion capsule back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to address the helium issue. If troubleshooting goes smoothly, NASA could attempt a launch as early as April 1, though no official target date has been announced.
The agency said the restructured timeline aims to preserve momentum toward returning humans to the lunar surface by 2028 while reducing technical risk and improving operational consistency across missions.
