CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA said Thursday that it would be delaying the return of humans to the moon for more than 50 years after Apollo.
The next Artemis mission, which would transport four men around the moon and back, is now scheduled for April 2026, according to Administrator Bill Nelson. After slipping from this year, it had been scheduled for fall 2025.
This pushes out the moon landing of two other astronauts on the third Artemis mission until at least 2027. NASA had set 2026 as its goal.
Only one mission has been accomplished by NASA’s Artemis program, which is a sequel to the Apollo moonshots of the late 1960s and early 1970s.In 2022, an empty Orion capsule launched on NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket and circled the moon.
The capsule returned with an overly burned and eroded heat shield, damage from the heat of reentry, despite the launch and lunar laps going smoothly. Only recently did engineers identify the problem and devise a solution.
According to Nelson, the Orion capsule’s original heat shield would be used, but the reentry path would be altered at the conclusion of the journey.
During Thursday’s news briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, astronaut Reid Wiseman, who is in charge of the lunar fly-around, participated. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover are part of his crew.
During NASA’s Apollo program, 24 astronauts traveled to the moon, and 12 of them landed there. Apollo 17 in December 1972 left the last bootprints in the lunar dust.
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