NASA offers new date for crewed lunar landing as hopes for 2024 fade

NASA has revealed that it won’t meet its 2024 target date for landing the first woman and first person of color on the moon.

Speaking to reporters during a conference call on Tuesday, November 9, NASA chief Bill Nelson said the date, set by the Trump administration in 2019, was “not grounded in technical feasibility,” adding that the space agency is now looking at “no earlier than 2025” for the lunar landing.

Recommended Videos

The news will not come as a great surprise to those who have been following the development of NASA’s moon-focused Artemis program, with a slew of issues — rising costs and the pandemic among them — putting increasing pressure on the original 2024 deadline.

During the call, Nelson explained that a recent court case brought by aerospace company Blue Origin regarding a contract dispute linked to the lunar lander project also impacted its plans, losing the agency seven months in litigation.

The NASA chief discussed the two Artemis missions that will take place before the crewed lunar landing. Artemis I, which will see the first use of its almighty SLS “megarocket” and Orion spacecraft, was supposed to launch this year but is now set for spring 2022 at the earliest, while Artemis II, which will send a crew on a flyby of the moon using the same spaceflight system, is slated for 2024.

Nelson also spoke of a space race with China, which is currently building out its new Earth-orbiting space station as well as eyeing the moon for a crewed landing.

“The Chinese space program is increasingly capable of landing Chinese taikonauts much earlier than originally expected,” the NASA chief said, adding that the U.S. will be “as aggressive as we can be, in a safe and technically feasible way, to beat our competitors with boots on the moon” in the first lunar landing of this century.

Whether NASA can meet its new 2025 timeline for the first crewed lunar landing since 1972 remains to be seen, but Nelson stressed that for it to have a chance, the agency will need additional cash from Congress.

“There will be the need of a significant increase in funding,” Nelson said, adding: “And that’s going to be starting with the 2023 budget.”

Editors' Recommendations

Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Meet NASA’s trio of mini moon rovers set to launch next year

NASA is ramping up its plans for exploring the moon, not only in terms of preparing to send astronauts there but also rovers. There's the VIPER rover, which will search for water around the lunar south pole, and now NASA is introducing a trio of mini rovers called CADRE, or Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration. These will work together as a team to map the lunar surface, testing the possibilities of using rovers in groups for future exploration.

The rovers, developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are just the size of a carry-on suitcase. They are designed to move independently but share data so they can cover more ground than a single rover could. They'll have to work over a lunar day, which is about two weeks, to map out features on the surface and look below ground using radar.

Read more
NASA addresses the crack in the hatch of the Crew-8 spacecraft

NASA and SpaceX have sent off the latest batch of astronauts to visit the International Space Station, with the launch of the Crew-8 mission late last night. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida just before 11 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 3, but there was a risk during that the launch might have been cancelled due to a crack discovered in the hatch seal of the spacecraft around 30 minutes before liftoff.

This morning, NASA shared further details about the crack and why they were confident in letting the launch go ahead.

Read more
Artemis II lunar crew rehearses splashdown in the Pacific

NASA’s Artemis II crew received disappointing news in January when their lunar-flyby mission was pushed back at least 10 months to September 2025.

The space agency said the delay was necessary to give Artemis teams “more time to work through the challenges with first-time developments and integration.” While the extra time gives the space agency more time to prepare the necessary hardware, it also gives the Artemis II crew -- comprising Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Jeremy Hansen -- additional time to train for their highly anticipated moon mission.

Read more