NASA scraps its 2027 moon landing, adds two missions in 2028

NASA’s path to the moon is taking a detour. The Artemis III mission, scheduled for 2027, will no longer land on the moon as originally planned, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced February 27 in a news conference. Instead, the agency aims to attempt two lunar landings in 2028.

“Everyone agrees this is the only way forward,” Isaacman said. “This is how NASA changed the world, and this is how NASA is going to do it again.”

The announcement comes as the Artemis II mission, which will send astronauts around the moon for the first time since 1972, is facing a series of delays. After two dress rehearsals in February revealed leaks and other issues with the fueling system for the Space Launch System rocket, NASA rolled it back into the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for repairs on February 25.

Artemis II originally targeted a launch as early as February 6 but now aims for no sooner than April 1, said associate administrator Lori Glaze. To make that date, the rocket will need to return to the launch pad by about March 21.

In 2022, Artemis I launched an uncrewed capsule around the moon after facing similar fuel leaks. After Artemis II’s flyby, the plan was for the Artemis III mission to land astronauts on the moon in 2027, even though the landers and spacesuits aren’t ready yet.

Letting three years elapse between launches is “not a pathway to success,” Isaacman said, nor is going directly from a lunar flyby to a landing without testing intermediate steps.

Instead, Artemis III will not land on the moon. That mission will still launch in 2027, but it will rendezvous in low Earth orbit with one or both commercially built landers under development by SpaceX and Blue Origin. The astronauts will also test out their space suits, designed by Houston-based company Axiom Space.

Artemis III will set the stage for two potential landing attempts in 2028 for Artemis IV and V. “We’re not committing to launching both, but we want to have the opportunity to do that,” Isaacman said.

NASA also scrapped plans to upgrade its SLS rocket between Artemis II and III.

“I’m breathing a sigh of relief,” says Jack Kiraly, director of government relations for the Planetary Society, headquartered in Pasadena, Calif. Combined with an upcoming Senate vote on the 2026 NASA Reauthorization Act — which makes specific recommendations about what landings should do — and other developments, Kiraly sees this announcement as helping to pull NASA’s focus back to scientific and engineering challenges rather than political and budgetary ones.

“The technical problems abound at this point,” Kiraly says. “But better to have the technical problems, because those can be solved. It’s politics and bureaucracy that get in the way of those things.”

The ultimate goal, Isaacman said, is to launch missions to the moon more frequently and build a long-term base there. He hopes the missions spark renewed interest in human space exploration.

“We want to see a lot more kids dressing up as astronauts on Halloween,” he said. “Inspiring the next generation to take us a lot farther than the moon is part of the plan.”