- cross-posted to:
- space@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- space@lemmy.ml
Last week, NASA announced that its Artemis II mission will be pushed to April at the earliest, due to issues with its helium tanks. Now, it’s broken the news that the Artemis III follow-up mission will totally cancel its original goal of landing astronauts on the Moon.
Instead, Artemis III—now scheduled to take place in 2027—will be another crewed flight without a landing phase, followed by Artemis IV, a crewed lander mission, hopefully in 2028.
You must log in or register to comment.
In terms of schedule though, it’s almost more like they’re inserting “Artemis 2.5” as a practice run in LEO, a la Apollo 9.
I don’t hate the change, because buying down some risk in Earth orbit makes a lot of sense, but I’m still not convinced that the landers will be ready for a demo flight next year.