NASA delays its return to the Moon for a year due to problems with private ships

The Moon will have to wait. NASA, the American space agency, announced this Tuesday the delay of its schedule for the Artemis project of manned flights to the satellite, a program that should serve as the first step for the arrival of humans to Mars. At a press conference in Washington, its administrator, Bill Nelson, indicated that the Artemis II mission, which was to take astronauts to lunar orbit for the first time in half a century in September of this year, is postponed until September 2025.

The Artemis III mission, which was to take the four selected astronauts to land on the south pole of the Moon in 2025, is postponed until September 2026. The Artemis IV mission maintains its planned launch date of 2028.

“To give the Artemis teams more time to solve the challenges that arise for the first time in the operations, development and integration (of the project), we are going to give more time to the Artemis II and III missions,” Nelson announced.

The first mission, Artemis I, had been successfully completed in December 2022. Then, the Orion capsule, launched without cargo, orbited the Moon and returned to Earth on schedule and in the planned manner. Five months later, the special agency announced the astronauts selected for the first manned mission, Artemis II: the Canadian Jeremy Hansen and the Americans Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover. Koch and Glover are, respectively, the first woman and the first black person to participate in a lunar mission.

The decision announced by Nelson represents a blow to American space illusions, which count on the Artemis missions to recover the space epic among citizens that was lived fifty years ago and to establish leadership in a race to conquer infinity and beyond. increasingly disputed. In this time, China has become a rival fighting for first place in just a few years.

But for weeks the postponement was taken for granted. In November, the space agency's inspector general had pointed to a series of problems in the program that must be corrected in order to continue the ambitious and very expensive project. Among them, the report indicated that the thermal cover that was supposed to protect the capsule Orion The heat and friction generated by the friction with the atmosphere during its descent to the Earth's surface had been “worn more than expected” on the Artemis I. In addition, the immense platform designed to transport, support and launch the colossal SLS rocket that must take Orion out of Earth orbit also suffered more damage than estimated for the 2022 launch.

Adding to the setbacks for the calendar is the fact that the spacesuits specially adapted for the Moon that the Artemis crew needs for their mission, and which the companies Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace are in charge of, are also not ready. The moon landing based on SpaceX's Starship is also not ready.

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