NASA delays first crewed flight to the moon in over 50 years

CNN — NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon this decade amid a renewed international push for lunar exploration, is facing more delays. The agency said Thursday that a planned mission to land on the moon in 2026 will now take place no earlier than mid-2027.

Additionally, a pathfinder mission that was slated to fly astronauts around the moon in September 2025 will now take place no earlier than April 2026.

That delay is linked in part to issues with the Orion crew capsule that will be home to the astronauts during both lunar missions. NASA previously disclosed that the spacecraft’s heat shield, which keeps Orion from burning up as the vehicle reenters the Earth’s atmosphere, became charred and eroded in an unexpected way during the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022.

The space agency has “done extensive testing to understand the risk that our astronauts will have while accomplishing the goals of landing back on the moon,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Thursday, adding that that testing was able to identify the root cause of the heat shield issues.

The issue relates to how the Orion capsule reenters Earth’s atmosphere upon returning from deep space, said NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy. The vehicle uses what NASA calls a “skip reentry” — acting like a rock skipping across the surface of a pond to slow its descent.

Orion makes use of the maneuver “because the velocity of the spacecraft and the energy that it has to dissipate is much greater than the energy that you dissipate just coming back from low Earth orbit,” Melroy said.

However, the problem arose when, as the Orion capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere during Artemis I’s return, “heat accumulated inside the heat shield’s outer layer” — causing the unexpected wear, according to Melroy.

NASA plans to address the issue by flying Artemis II with a “modified trajectory.” That will include reducing the amount of time that Orion spends “skipping” across the atmospshere, officials said.

The announcement marks only the latest in a string of delays for the space agency’s cornerstone Artemis Program.

NASA has sporadically announced various timeline shifts as the agency works to gear up for Artemis II, a mission that will send astronauts into deep space. So far, the agency has only launched one uncrewed test flight of the rocket slated to fly astronauts to the moon: The Space Launch System. That test flight, called Artemis I, took flight in 2022.

The delays are moving the target landing date for Artemis III, the mission that will carry astronauts to the lunar surface, closer to the timeframe NASA had targeted before President-elect Donald Trump’s first term.

Prior to Trump taking office, NASA had targeted 2028 for the first moon landing. But in 2019, then-Vice President Mike Pence made the stunning declaration that the administration would direct NASA to drastically accelerate that timeline, aiming to conduct a crewed moon landing by 2024.

Pence in part announced the decision to try to accelerate a US moon landing as part of a space race against China. Officials on Capitol Hill have routinely raised alarm bells about the possibility of losing US dominance in space.

During a press event in April this year, officials from China announced they planned to put astronauts on the moon by 2030.

On Thursday, Nelson also highlighted NASA’s intention to land astronauts on the moon’s south pole, which is believed to be home to valuable stores of water ice that could be converted into rocket fuel or even drinking water.

“It is vital for us to land on the south pole, so that we do not cede portions of that lunar south pole to the Chinese,” Nelson said.

The delay announcement comes as NASA is headed for another period of transition, with the next Trump administration moving in. On Wednesday, Trump revealed his intention to nominate Jared Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur with deep ties to Elon Musk and SpaceX, as NASA administrator.

NASA could face additional schedule change directives under the incoming leadership. Isaacman has also publicly expressed his distaste for certain elements of NASA’s current Artemis program, including how the space agency handed out multiple contracts for the development of a lunar lander that will ferry astronauts from Orion down to the lunar surface.