When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesArtemis 2 enchanted the world in the beginning of April, when its crew of four astronauts flew a 10-day mission around the moon and back to Earth. It was the first human spaceflight of the agency’s Artemis program, and the first crewed moon mission in more than half a century.To add to the excitement, in the weeks leading up to the mission, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a dramatic restructuring of the Artemis program. He highlighted a host of mission objectives and ambitious infrastructure plans to establish a permanent human base on the surface of the moon in the coming decade.AdvertisementAdvertisementPart of that vision includes increasing how often NASA launches Artemis’ Space Launch System (SLS) rocket — with the goal of shortening the gap between missions from a few years to about 10 months. (There was a 3.5-year gap between Artemis 1 and Artemis 2.) Artemis 3 also got a complete redesign, from the program’s first lunar landing mission to an Earth-orbit rendezvous and docking-only demonstration between Orion and the program’s privately developed lunar landers. Now, it seems those landers may have a hard time hitting NASA’s 10-month cadence target.Artemis 2 lifts off from Launch Complex-39B, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, April 1, 2026. | Credit: Space.com / Josh DinnerIsaacman testified before the House Appropriations Committee on Monday (April 27), answering lawmakers’ questions regarding the White House’s 2027 budget request for NASA, which allocates $2.8 billion for the Artemis Human Landing System contracts — the program’s lunar lander vehicles. NASA has partnered with SpaceX and Blue Origin to design and manufacture those landers to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface, which it hopes to do for the first time on the Artemis 4 and Artemis 5 missions in 2028.Before the landers — SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon — graduate to those missions, though, NASA wants them to operate in tandem with Artemis’ Orion crew capsule in orbit around Earth. The agency has indicated a willingness to fly with whatever spacecraft is ready when Artemis 3’s time comes.During the hearing on Monday, Congressman Ha …
