NASA Cancels Artemis III Return to the Moon

And more. 

In a live video presentation today, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a sweeping reorganization of the Artemis program to return to the moon. The changes include reassigning the Artemis III mission from the first moon landing to a set of tests in Earth Orbit, which instead moves the landing out to Artemis IV - or possibly farther. A goal is to increase the cadence of missions and it includes using funding from the cancellation of an expensive rocket upper stage. 

Isaacman is seeking to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs.  

A key message in the talk was the absurdly low pace of the current program to get to the moon, compared to the pace NASA worked at in the Apollo program. 

During past exploration missions, from Mercury through Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle program, NASA has launched humans on average about once every three months. It has been nearly 3.5 years since Artemis I launched.

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

Yes, it actually mentions 3.5 years since Artemis I even though that flight was uncrewed; not one astronaut on board. How do we get a pace from one launch?  Do we count from completely different vehicles, like the Crew-12 launch, or from the last shuttle flight in 2011?   

“NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.” 

Congress pushed an Artemis IV and V onto NASA, can Boeing even build those two in time?  Much like how temporary Administrator Sean Duffy said back in December, "Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III are all $4 billion a launch, $4 billion a launch. At $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program. It just, I don’t think that exists."

The changes announced today include:

• Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
• Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
• Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
• Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
• Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
• NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
• NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

The goal is to standardize the SLS rocket into a single configuration to make it as reliable as possible and to launch it as frequently as every 10 months. NASA will fly the SLS vehicle until there are commercial alternatives to launch crew to the Moon, perhaps through Artemis V since Congress has mandated a IV and V, or perhaps longer.

As is often the case, Eric Berger at Ars Technica claims inside sources in NASA. He has pretty good record with his predictions, and here says the sources said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

Which leaves Boeing as the one that has the most to win or lose by cranking the changes to SLS. The first item in that list is the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, which Boeing is contracted to develop. They released a positive-sounding message. 

“Boeing is a proud partner to the Artemis mission and our team is honored to contribute to NASA’s vision for American space leadership,” said Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security president and CEO, in the news release. “The SLS core stage remains the world’s most powerful rocket stage, and the only one that can carry American astronauts directly to the moon and beyond in a single launch. As NASA lays out an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet the increased production needs.”

From our viewpoint, over a half a century past the Apollo years, and many of us having watched the development from Project Mercury forward, the way NASA implemented the first trip to the moon is an excellent lesson in planning to complete something everyone says is impossible. Like a longtime jogger training for their first marathon, they just kept going a step farther every mission. Apollo 7 was a low-Earth orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft, Apollo 8 tested the LEM in lunar orbit, Apollo 9 was a LEO rendezvous with the lunar lander as if it had launched from the moon, and Apollo 10 tested the lunar lander descending to the Moon, without touching down, and getting back to the Command Module in lunar orbit.

With its previous Artemis template, NASA skipped the steps taken by Apollo 7, 9, and 10. In the view of many industry officials, this leap from Artemis II—a crewed lunar flyby of the Moon testing only the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft—to Artemis III and a full-on lunar landing was enormous and risky.

A step too far.  

Isaacman makes reference in his message about not having enough missions to develop muscle memory of all the things they need to do.  Before today, the plan before the landing was one lunar orbital mission. That's it - the next mission was the landing. The new plan adds one mission - for the Orion capsule to rendezvous and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit. Yeah, it's true going from one mission to two is doubling the amount of practice that's possible, it's just the question of whether that's enough; or even if it's worth doing. 

For final words, I bow to Eric Berger: 

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

In April 2024, Ars reported that some senior NASA officials were considering an Earth-orbit rendezvous between Orion and Starship as a means to buy down risk for a lunar landing. NASA ultimately punted on the idea before it was revived by Isaacman this month.

Additionally, in October 2024, Ars offered a guide to saving the “floundering” Artemis program by canceling the Block 1B upgrade for the SLS rocket, replacing its upper stage with a Centaur V, and canceling the Lunar Gateway. This would free up an estimated $2 billion annually to focus on accelerating a lunar landing, the publication estimated.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

First-time Milestones for the Artemis III Mission prior to Feb. 27, 2025. (Image credit: NASA Aerospace Advisory Panel)