NASA said it's revamping its Artemis moon exploration program to like it more like the fast-paced Apollo program half a century ago. The plan means adding an extra practice flight before attempting a high-risk lunar landing with a crew in two years. The overhaul in the flight lineup came just two days after NASA’s new moon rocket returned to its hangar for more repairs, and a safety panel warned the space agency to scale back its overly ambitious goals for humanity’s first lunar landing since 1972.
This could mean more work in the Huntsville area with more launches of NASA’s new super rocket called the “Space Launch System” or SLS. The original plan appeared to include a blastoff every other year. Now, the agency is instead leaning toward annual crewed launches of the new Alabama SLS rocket on Artemis missions.
The currently Artemis-2 flight around the moon is delayed until at least April due to a helium pressurization problem on the SLS rocket. This is widely considered a repeat of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, where the astronauts snapped the iconic “Earthrise” photo of our globe rising above the lunar horizons. NASA is now reshuffling its near moon program to more closely copy the moon program. Artemis-3 was originally supposed to be a lunar landing. NASA safety officials think that idea is to dangerous.
The new plan is to reassign Artemis-3 to more closely resemble the 1969 flight of Apollo 9. Astronauts Jim McDivitt, Rusty Schweikart, and Dave Scott flew to Earth orbit to test the bug-like lunar lander later used by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to walk on a region of the moon known as the “Sea of Tranquility.” Artemis-3 will take a similar course as a planned practice mission to dock with a moon landing vehicle built either by SpaceX or Blue Origins.
The new plan calls for a moon landing — potentially even two moon landings — by astronauts in 2028.
“Everybody agrees. This is the only way forward,” NASA new’s administrator Jared Isaacman said.
The hydrogen fuel leaks and helium flow problems that struck the Space Launch System rocket on the pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center earlier this month had also plagued the first Artemis test flight without a crew in 2022. Another three-year gap was looming between Artemis II and the moon landing by astronauts as originally envisioned, Isaacman said.
Isaacman stressed that “it should be incredibly obvious” that three years between flights is unacceptable. He'd like to get it down to one year or even less. The tech billionaire who bought his own trips to orbit and performed the world’s first private spacewalk, took the helm at NASA in December.
During NASA’s storied Apollo program, he said, astronauts’ first flight to the moon was followed by two more missions before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. What's more, he added, the Apollo moonshots followed one another in quick succession, just as the earlier Projects Mercury and Gemini had rapid flight rates, sometimes coming just a few months apart.
Twenty-four Apollo astronauts flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972, with 12 of them landing.
“No one at NASA forgot their history books. They knew how to do this," Isaacman said. “Now we're putting it in action.”
Part of that effort means using retired Apollo rocket engineers as consultants on the new Space Launch System that was designed, built, tested, and managed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
Craig Sumner is one of them.
The retired engineer started his career at NASA working on the Lunar Roving Vehicle, a dune buggy that astronauts on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 used to drive around on the moon. Sumner later worked on a plan to save the Skylab space station that followed the Apollo moon landings, by using the fledgling space shuttle to boost the orbiting complex to a higher and safer orbit, so it could be salvaged. Skylab burned up in Earth's atmosphere before the first shuttle flight could be attempted.
After that, Sumner worked on the external fuel tank used on the space shuttle. That experience led to an invitation for the retired engineer to consult on the central part of the new Space Launch System. The orange colored “core stage” is like an elongated and reinforced version of the shuttle's external tank.
“I was brought on board as a “SME,” a subject matter expert, to work on the thermal protection system (on SLS,) and to make sure it performed and exceeded our expectations,” said Sumner. The TPS is a spray-on heat shielding, much like the foam used on the earlier space shuttle’s external fuel tank. It gives the SLS its orange color.
Sumner spoke fondly of his days at NASA with APR news and works as a docent at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, weaving stories of his days with the Apollo and shuttle programs for visitors to the complex. On his time working on “Space Launch System,” Sumner sounds more dissatisfied, due mainly to a lack of financial support from Washington that he says contributed to launch delays.
“They agreed to a contract value, and then they said, ‘well, we can't give you that much money. We're just going to give you this much. What can you do with it?’ Sumner observed. “And then you drag the entire army with you and increase the cost. You don't meet milestones, and you look like fools.”
To pick up the pace and reduce risk, NASA will standardize its Space Launch System rockets moving forward, Isaacman said. These are the massive rockets that will launch astronauts to the moon aboard Orion capsules. At the same time, Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are speeding up their work on the landers needed to get the astronauts from lunar orbit down to the surface.
Isaacman said next year will see an Orion crew rendezvousing in orbit around Earth with SpaceX's Starship, Blue Origin's Blue Moon or both landers. It's similar to the methodical approach that worked so well during Apollo in the late 1960s, he noted. Apollo 8, astronauts' first flight to the moon, was followed by two more missions before Armstrong and Aldrin aimed for the lunar surface.
“We should be getting back to basics and doing what we know works,” he said.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel recommended this week that NASA revise its objectives for Artemis III “given the demanding mission goals.” It’s urgent the space agency do that, the panel said, if the United States hopes to safely return astronauts to the moon. Isaacman said the revised Artemis flight plan addresses the panel's concerns and is supported by industry and the Trump administration.
