CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA on Friday announced a major overhaul of Artemis, the space agency’s moon mission, saying that sending astronauts to the moon in 2028 is not realistic.
New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the changes, saying a moon landing was not possible without another preparatory mission beforehand.
“We’re going to get there in steps, continue to take down risk as we learn more and we roll that information into subsequent designs,” Isaacman told CBS News. “We’ve got to get back to basics.”
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Isaacman stressed that three years between flights is unacceptable and that he’d like to get it down to one year or less.
During NASA’s storied Apollo program, he said, astronauts’ first flight to the moon was followed by two more missions before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
“No one here at NASA forgot their history books,” Issacman said. “We shouldn’t be comfortable with the current cadence. We should be getting back to basics and doing what we know works.”
The announcement came as NASA has been struggling to launch the Artemis II, the mission to send four astronauts on a trip around the moon.
Launch had been planned for early February, but it was delayed to repair a hydrogen leak and, more recently, to give engineers time to fix a helium pressurization problem in the rocket’s upper stage. Launch is now on hold until at least April 1.
Artemis III, which had been expected to land astronauts near the moon’s south pole in 2028, will be redefined and rescheduled — launching in 2027 but not to the moon, Isaacman said.
The revised Artemis III mission will also give astronauts a chance to test out to test out new spacesuits future moonwalkers will use, CBS reported.
President Trump gave the world the Artemis Program, and NASA and our partners have the plan to deliver. We will standardize architecture where possible, add missions and accelerate flight rate, execute in an evolutionary way, and safely return American astronauts to the Moon,… pic.twitter.com/Qjm6BD5Ipi
— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) February 27, 2026
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel recommended this week that NASA revise its objectives for Artemis III “given the demanding mission goals.”
It’s urgent the space agency do that, the panel said, if the United States hopes to safely return astronauts to the moon.