NASA’s Artemis mission to return humans to the moon delayed until 2025

NASA has pushed back the schedule for its Artemis mission, which will put humans on the moon, including landing at the South Pole. The first of them, “Artemis II”, will be launched in September 2025 and will orbit the Earth’s satellite, while the “Artemis III” landing mission is currently planned for September 2026, a year later. . “Artemis IV” is still scheduled to be launched in 2028, and the mission is still on schedule. the agency wrote in today’s announcement.

Future missions aim to “lay the foundation for long-term scientific exploration of the moon” and will “land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface.” NASA said the delay was primarily to ensure crew safety as the agency needed to resolve battery issues and study circuits related to environmental systems, including air ventilation.

Artemis 1, due to launch in 2022, will put NASA’s Orion capsule into orbit and provide data to the agency that led to the decision to postpone the missions. “We let the hardware talk to us so that crew safety drives our decisions. We will use the Artemis 2 flight test and every subsequent flight to reduce the risk of future lunar missions,” U.S. Space Agency said Katherine Kohner, deputy administrator for the agency’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.