The American project for a human return to the Moon has just undergone a major revision of its schedule and objectives. This upheaval directly concerns the Artemis program, with NASA postponing the initially planned landing and changing the distribution of roles between the different missions.
This decision follows the return of the Artemis 2 launch vehicle to the hangar for repairs. The space agency maintains the goal of sending a crew of four astronauts to orbit our natural satellite as early as this spring, subject to the completion of repair and maintenance work on time. However, the next mission, Artemis 3 and its historic moon landing scheduled for 2028, will no longer proceed according to the original plan.
Artist's illustration of SpaceX's Starship on the Moon during an Artemis mission for NASA.
Credit: SpaceX The new schedule establishes that Artemis 3 will launch earlier, in 2027, with a modified objective. Instead of landing on the Moon, this mission will verify rendezvous and docking maneuvers with future lunar landers and propulsion modules in Earth orbit. It will also allow for the testing of new space suits. It will finally be Artemis 4 that accomplishes the program's first human moon landing, potentially followed by a second one by the end of 2028 with Artemis 5.
This phased approach recalls the methodology used during the Apollo program. At the time, several successive flights had allowed for the verification and validation of essential technologies before landing on the lunar surface. NASA now judges that its initial planning concentrated too many firsts and technical risks on a single mission, Artemis 3, to guarantee optimal safety for the crews.
Among the identified technical obstacles was dependence on SpaceX's Starship, which requires orbital refueling operations never before performed. The space agency also wishes to reduce the gap of several years that separated the Artemis flights. To achieve this, it plans to standardize the SLS launch vehicle by simplifying certain technical evolutions planned for later versions.
New roadmap for the Artemis program after the restructuring.
Credit: NASA
An official illustration reveals this new vision. It shows future missions using a more standardized upper stage, potentially the Centaur already proven on other launchers. The image also depicts a more sustained human presence on the Moon, with several landers, a rover, and elements of a future base. According to statements reported by the NASA Administrator, this reorganization aims to lay more solid foundations for a sustained return to our satellite.
The Challenge of Orbital Refueling
To reach the Moon with a significant payload, SpaceX's Starship was designed with a particular architecture. It must be refueled with cryogenic propellant directly in Earth orbit before heading to our satellite. This maneuver has never been performed on such a scale.
The process requires a first Starship, acting as a flying tank, to take off and position itself in orbit. A second vessel, the Starship intended for the lunar mission, then joins it. A transfer of extremely cold liquid propellants, like liquid methane and oxygen, must then take place in space between the two vehicles.
This operation presents a major technical difficulty. It involves maintaining the fuels and oxidizers at very low temperatures in the vacuum of space, designing reliable pumping and transfer systems in microgravity, and guaranteeing perfect sealing of the connections. A failure during this critical phase would jeopardize the entire mission.
Mastering this orbital refueling therefore constitutes a major technological bottleneck that SpaceX must overcome. The success of the next Starship test flights will be decisive in validating this capability and enabling the revised schedule of the Artemis program.