NASA is accelerating its efforts to establish a base on the moon and return astronauts to the lunar surface within the next two years, drawing inspiration from the urgency and intensity of the Apollo programme.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Friday that the agency remains on schedule to launch Artemis III next summer for a docking exercise involving lunar landers developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. The two-week mission, carrying four astronauts, will remain in Earth's orbit rather than travel to the moon.
Artemis IV, the landmark mission intended to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo era, is still scheduled for 2028, Isaacman said. His update came six months after four astronauts successfully completed Artemis II, a flight around the moon that marked humanity's first lunar journey in more than half a century.
NASA officials said the agency would keep its options open for as long as possible before selecting either SpaceX or Blue Origin to provide the lunar lander for Artemis IV.
Isaacman acknowledged that the renewed space race, now involving China rather than the Soviet Union, would be "much closer than it ever needed to be" because of delays in previous years.
However, he said NASA was now moving faster by reducing unnecessary meetings and bureaucratic obstacles, while SpaceX, Blue Origin and other companies worked around the clock to meet deadlines. The agency is also expanding its workforce.
Drawing on Apollo's intense pace between 1968 and 1972, when 24 astronauts travelled to the moon and 12 walked on its surface, Isaacman said the approach was neither a new management philosophy nor a technology-industry shortcut.
"It's about our own history. It's a playbook this agency knows really well, the same playbook that went from Apollo 7 splashdown to Apollo 11 in just nine months," he said at a news conference at Kennedy Space Center.
Both lunar landers are scheduled to launch next summer for docking exercises with the Artemis III crew, which consists of three NASA astronauts and an Italian astronaut travelling aboard NASA's Orion capsule.
The mission will require three launches in rapid succession from Cape Canaveral. Orion will first dock with Blue Origin's Blue Ghost at an altitude of about 270 miles (435 kilometres) above Earth before connecting with SpaceX's Starship in a slightly lower orbit.
"As a rocket nerd, it's going to be pretty awesome," said Amit Kshatriya, NASA's associate administrator.
Meanwhile, preparations for NASA's planned lunar base near the moon's south pole are advancing, with the first launch expected by the end of this year. The location is far from the more equatorial regions explored during the Apollo missions.
A Pittsburgh-based company whose first lunar landing attempt failed in 2024 will make a second attempt, targeting the south polar region with a rover and other scientific experiments.
Additional landers, rovers and orbiters are expected to follow. NASA officials said the number of robotic missions could be sufficient to ensure that a lunar vehicle is already waiting for astronauts when the first Artemis crews arrive to explore the surface.
To reduce risks and speed up preparations, the first astronauts to walk on the moon will use lighter, less complicated spacesuits than those being developed by Axiom Space for longer-duration missions later in the programme.
Axiom plans to test the new suits, known as "sortie suits," aboard the International Space Station next year.
Establishing a sustained human presence on the moon presents a much greater challenge than the brief visits made during the Apollo programme, said NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, a member of the Artemis III crew.
"It is incredibly ambitious," Rubio told The Associated Press earlier this month. "One thing I've always believed and learned is don't bet against America."