NASA will not land astronauts on the moon in 2027, the space agency’s administrator Jared Isaacman announced on Friday. Instead the agency will rejigger its planned Artemis III mission to test in-orbit capabilities such as using the astronauts’ space suits in microgravity and rendezvousing with at least one of the spacecraft that NASA hopes to use as a lunar lander.
NASA will then attempt to two crewed lunar landings in 2028 as part of Artemis IV and Artemis V. The decision represents a major schedule shift for the agency, which has been pushing for years to make Artemis III the mission that will land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than half a century.
The announcement comes after NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission encountered more problems with its rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), last week. As a result, NASA has had to scrap a target March launch, which already represented a delay from its initial time line. The SLS, which now has helium flow issues, had already encountered hydrogen leaks and other problems that had caused its launch window to slip earlier this year—and similar issues had caused months of delays for the rocket’s first launch in the uncrewed Artemis I mission. The next launch window for Artemis II opens in early April.
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At a press conference on Friday, Isaacman said NASA was confident that increasing the cadence of SLS launches to once every 10 months or so would result in less risk and more mission success.
“I’m excited because I think we have a path here to actually get the job done within the time frames that we’ve targeted right now,” Isaacman said. NASA needs to rebuild its “core competencies,” he said, adding that the agency will work to standardize the SLS production so that the time between launches can be reduced as much as possible. Currently, the period between the last SLS launch for Artemis I and the upcoming missions will be more than three years.
“There is simply a right and wrong way to go about doing this,” Isaacman said. “Launching every three years and ... massive changes in the configuration of vehicle is not a recipe for success.”
Editor’s Note (2/27/26): This is a developing story and may be updated.