WASHINGTON, January 9NASA postponed manned flights to the Moon, the Artemis 2 orbital mission is postponed until September 2025, the crew landing on the Moon during the Artemis 3 mission — until September 2026, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a news conference Tuesday.
“Safety is our top priority, and to give Artemis program staff more time to resolve mission design, build and integration issues, we're giving more time for the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions,” Nelson said.
The Artemis-4 mission, which will take part in the construction of a lunar station, is planned for September 2028.
Previously, it was planned that the flight with the Artemis 2 mission would take place in 2024, and the landing of the crew on the surface of the Moon in 2025, but experts, including the US control agency, warned that numerous delays made such dates unattainable. The head of NASA himself also emphasized that the agency would not send a man to the Moon until full confidence in the safety of the flight and acknowledged the likelihood of rescheduling the flights.
The announcement of the delay of manned flights comes against the backdrop of the failure of the mission to send the private landing module Peregrine to the lunar surface . It blasted off Monday on a state-of-the-art Vulcan rocket and was expected to land on the Moon at the end of February. However, eight hours after the launch, problems with the module’s propulsion system became known. On Tuesday, the company Astrobotic, which developed the lander under a contract with NASA, said that the probe continues to fly, but there is no longer any chance of a soft landing on the Moon.
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