The NASA Administrator announced on November 9 that the crewed flight to the Moon, the first in five decades, will not occur before 2025.
This means that the Artemis 3 mission has been delayed by at least one year from the original target set by the administration of former President Donald Trump. The reason for the delay is due to “legal disputes” related to the contract for developing the lunar lander.
Previously, Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin filed lawsuits with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Federal Court (USCFC), claiming that NASA and the federal government were “biased” towards SpaceX when awarding them the exclusive contract to develop the launch and landing systems. However, in the latest developments, NASA has won the lawsuit.
Simulation of SpaceX’s Starship taking NASA astronauts back to the Moon. (Image: SpaceX)
“We spent nearly 7 months on litigation, which pushed the first human landing on the Moon’s surface (since 1972) back to no earlier than 2025,” explained NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. He also revealed that there will be an uncrewed landing at some point before humans set foot on the Moon’s surface.
The good news is that NASA is making solid progress. On November 5, the agency announced it had reached a significant milestone by stacking the Orion spacecraft on top of the SLS Block 1 rocket, which stands 98 meters tall, inside the assembly facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aiming for the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission launch in February 2022.
Simulation of the Orion spacecraft combined with the Starship lander. (Image: Homem do Espaço)
Artemis 1 is the first flight in the Artemis program, aimed at testing the Orion spacecraft’s capabilities in deep space. Artemis 2 is scheduled to launch in 2023, sending the Orion crew on a lunar orbit mission. Finally, Artemis 3 will send astronauts into orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft while another group of astronauts, including the first woman and the first person of color, will land on the celestial body using SpaceX’s Starship lander.
