NASA may delay landing astronauts on the Moon – 8/9/2023 – Science

NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which aims to put humans on the moon by 2025, may not end up involving a manned landing, an official said on Tuesday.

Jim Free, the space agency’s associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Missions Directorate, told reporters at a briefing that certain key elements would have to be in place, in particular the landing system being developed by SpaceX.

If that isn’t ready in time, “it’s possible we’ll end up flying a different mission,” he said.
Under the Artemis program, NASA plans a series of missions of increasing complexity to return to the Moon and establish a sustainable presence with the aim of developing and testing technologies for an eventual trip to Mars.

The first, Artemis 1, flew an unmanned spacecraft around the Moon in 2022. Artemis 2, scheduled for November 2024, will do the same with a crew on board.

But it is on Artemis 3, scheduled for December 2025, that NASA is planning its great return to the Moon with humans for the first time since 1972, now at the natural satellite’s south pole, where ice can be collected and converted into rocket fuel.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX won the contract to develop a landing system based on a version of its Starship prototype rocket, which is still far from being ready. A Starship orbital test flight ended with a dramatic explosion in April.

Free said NASA officials were at SpaceX’s Texas facility a few weeks ago to “try to get a little bit more of a sense of their timeline.”

While the visit was illuminating, he said he remained concerned “because they haven’t launched yet” and will have to do so several times before the rocket is ready.

In addition, Starship delays have repercussions, as the company responsible for making the spacesuits needs to know how they will perform on the ship, and it is also necessary to build simulators for astronauts to learn their systems.

Free added that NASA will inform the public in the near future, once it has had time to “digest” the information gathered during the base visit.