NASA on Friday announced a major overhaul to its Artemis moon program, a “course correction” that will add missions and increase the pace of launches ahead of a targeted lunar landing attempt in 2028.NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the changes will increase the program’s safety, reduce delays and ultimately help achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of returning astronauts to the moon and establishing a long-term presence on the lunar surface.“Everybody agrees this is the only way forward,” Isaacman said Friday in a news briefing. “And I’ll say, I had similar conversations with all our stakeholders in Congress, and they’re fully behind NASA in this approach. I know this is how NASA changed the world, and this is how NASA is going to do it again.”AdvertisementAdvertisementIsaacman announced that the Artemis III mission, which was set to land astronauts on the moon in 2028, will no longer shoot for the lunar surface. Instead, he said, NASA will attempt to launch Artemis III by mid-2027 to conduct key technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit, including rendezvous and docking tests with one or both commercially built lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin.After that, Artemis IV will launch in 2028 to land on the moon.The new direction could inject much-needed momentum into the almost decade-old Artemis program, which has been plagued by cost overruns and delays — including most recently a monthlong delay for the Artemis II mission, which aims to send four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the moon.Isaacman said …
