NASA redirects Artemis moon mission program, postponing a planned astronaut landing

NPR | By Brendan Byrne

Published February 27, 2026 at 2:43 PM CST

The mobile launcher containing the Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft arrives at the Vehicle Assembly Building after a rollback that lasted over ten hours at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on February 25, 2026. NASA teams detected issues with the helium flow and removed the rocket from the launchpad.

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA's plan to return humans to the moon is changing course.

The space agency outlined a new path for its Artemis moon mission, designed to return humans to the moon using NASA's SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft for the first time since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972.

The previous Artemis schedule got humans to the moon's surface after three missions — with additional trips planned after that.

That process was already underway. NASA's Artemis I mission launched in November 2022, sending an uncrewed Orion space capsule on a trip around the moon and back. A crewed Artemis II flight is set to launch a crew of four astronauts as soon as April. The next mission was planned to take humans to the lunar surface.

"This is just not the right pathway forward," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Friday during a news conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

He said the time between the Artemis I and II missions — more than three years — led partly to his decision. Artemis II remains grounded at Kennedy Space Center due to an issue with the SLS rocket's helium pressurization system. It also sprung a leak of liquid hydrogen, which is used as propellant.

Artemis I encountered the same issues ahead of its launch.

"When you are experiencing some of the same issues between launches, you probably got to take a close look at your process for remediation," said Isaacman.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman speaks during a press conference to discuss the Artemis II mission at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday. NASA said it would revise its Artemis lunar program, which has suffered multiple delays in recent years, to ensure Americans can return to the Moon's surface by 2028.

To speed up the launch schedule, NASA will now keep the Artemis III mission closer to home. It will launch to space and remain in Earth's orbit — not the moon's — and practice rendezvousing with the program's lunar landing system.

Artemis IV and V would then take astronauts to the surface of the moon, utilizing lunar landers designed and developed by commercial space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin.

"This is not about slowing down momentum. This is about increasing it, about making sure that we are focused on the right things in terms of how we execute the program," said NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya.

The new approach is similar to the Apollo mission architecture, which successfully landed the first astronauts on the moon in 1969.

"No one at NASA forgot their history books," said Issacman. "They knew how to do this. They've had plans like this for a long time now. We're putting it in action."

Isaacman wants launches of Artemis missions to happen every ten months. According to NASA, the average time between Apollo launches was five months. At times, shuttle missions happened almost every three months.

To do that, NASA is standardizing its SLS rocket design, limiting changes to its upper stage starting in 2028. Isaacman said NASA plans to increase its workforce, transition contractors to federal workers. And the agency is asking SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate the development of their lunar landers.

As Isaacman charts a new course for the agency's lunar missions, its next Artemis mission remains delayed. The rocket and space capsule were transported back to the Vehicle Assembly Building this week as engineers work to fix the helium issue.

If all goes well, NASA could attempt a launch as early as April 1, but it has not officially announced a target date.