NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has announced new delays to the Artemis program for the first manned mission to the Moon since 1972, postponing the next two planned missions, including the planned lunar landing. Nelson said at a press conference that the next Artemis mission, which will send astronauts around the Moon, has been pushed back to April 2026, while the next lunar landing mission has been pushed back to 2027.
The Artemis program was established by NASA during Donald Trump’s first term with the goal of returning astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission. The program aims to establish a lunar base as a step toward the more ambitious goal of human missions to Mars. The United States is estimated to spend about $93 billion on the program by 2025. The Artemis program has made remarkable progress, but it has also faced delays and rising costs. In 2022, NASA launched the Artemis I mission, a 25-day unmanned journey around the Moon that concluded with the successful splashdown of the Orion capsule carrying a simulated crew in the Pacific Ocean.
This marked the first flight of NASA’s massive Space Launch System rocket, a powerful and over-costed vehicle tasked with launching humans into space with the Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule. SpaceX’s Starship has been contracted to land astronauts on the Moon’s surface. The next Artemis II mission, a flight that will carry astronauts around the Moon with Orion but without landing, has faced delays, including one announced by Nelson in January 2024 that pushed the mission’s schedule back to September 2025. Nelson said that there will be a further delay to April 2026. The Artemis program has been NASA’s top priority under Nelson and will rely heavily on SpaceX’s Starship rocket.
NASA puts New Artemis Moon Rovers to the test
In support of its Artemis effort, which aims to send humans back to the Moon, NASA has successfully finished the first phase of testing on three Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTVs). NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston is doing a thorough study of the vehicles, which were created by Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab. Using static models of the vehicles, testing took place at the Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) facility, which replicates the low-gravity conditions of the Moon from October to December.





“This is the first major test milestone within the Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract, and to have actual rovers delivered only four months after these companies were awarded is remarkable,” Steve Munday, NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle Project Manager, said in a statement. Axiom Space’s Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit moon spacesuit and NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) planetary prototype were the two types of spacesuits that NASA engineers and astronauts wore during the testing.
Astronauts tested different components of the LTV designs while hung in ARGOS, a simulation of circumstances at one-sixth of Earth’s gravity. Crews handled cargo, deployed science payloads, and stored tools, among other duties. Additionally, the researchers examined how simple it was for astronauts to get on and off the rovers and use the controls while donning heavy spacesuit gloves.
Why the Moon
The Artemis missions will build a community on the Moon, driving a new lunar economy and inspiring a new generation. Narrator Drew Barrymore and NASA team members explain why returning to the Moon is the natural next step in human exploration and how the lessons learned from Artemis will pave the way to Mars and beyond. With the Artemis campaign, NASA will land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. “We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars,” NASA notes.