NASA outlines faster Artemis plan for 2028 Moon landing

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and other agency leaders gave an update on October 23 on the agency's path to returning Americans to the lunar surface in 2028. They described progress on previously announced plans to speed up the Artemis programme.

The agency is targeting the Artemis III test flight in 2027 and the Artemis IV Moon landing mission in 2028. Artemis III will test rendezvous, docking and operations between NASA's Orion spacecraft and lunar lander test vehicles from SpaceX and Blue Origin in Earth orbit.

Four astronauts will fly aboard Orion on the SLS rocket for a planned 14-day mission in Earth orbit. In the sequence NASA described, Blue Origin will first launch a Blue Moon lander test article into Earth orbit, and SLS will then launch Orion and its crew to dock with it. SpaceX will launch a Version 3 Starship lander test article, and Orion will undock from Blue Moon and dock with Starship.

NASA said hardware for Artemis III is on track and that processing timelines have been cut by about half. It also said it redesigned, built and tested a critical fuel-line component in-house in five months, at roughly a tenth of an earlier outside-vendor estimate.

For Artemis IV, astronauts will launch aboard Orion on the SLS rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX's Starship will refuel in Earth orbit, meet Orion and carry the spacecraft toward the Moon. Blue Origin will use transfer stages in Earth orbit to push its Blue Moon Mark 2 lander toward the Moon, where it will meet Orion in a closer lunar orbit before descending. Both companies are targeting support for a crewed landing in 2028.

NASA is pursuing two upper-stage options for the SLS rocket: the interim cryogenic propulsion stage and a stretched version of ULA's Centaur V. It also announced plans with Axiom Space to develop a lighter second suit, the Sortie suit, for the first moonwalks. The suit is roughly half the weight of Axiom's larger suit and will not replace it.

Isaacman said: "This is a very energized NASA, and these updates are only a small part of that story. We are bringing extreme focus to the mission to ensure delivery of world-changing outcomes as quickly, safely, affordably, and successfully as possible." Jeremy Parsons said: "NASA should be expected to do this kind of work, and we have some of the best technical knowledge in the world on rocket hardware and operations to do it." NASA plans to send Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions at the lunar South Pole.