NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, set to return humans to the Moon in 2025, may not include a crew landing, an official said Tuesday.
Jim Frey, the space agency’s associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, told reporters at a briefing that some key elements will have to be in place — particularly the landing system being developed by SpaceX.
If it’s not ready in time, “we could be flying a different mission,” he said.
Under the Artemis program, NASA is planning a series of missions of increasing complexity to create a permanent presence to develop and test technologies for a return to the Moon and an eventual trip to Mars.
First, Artemis 1 will fly an uncrewed spacecraft around the moon in 2022. Artemis 2, planned for November 2024, will do the same with a crew on board.
But it is during the Artemis 3 mission, scheduled for December 2025, that NASA plans to return to the Moon with humans for the first time since 1972, this time to the lunar south pole, where ice can be harvested. And it can be converted into rocket fuel. .
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has won a contract for a landing system based on a version of its prototype Starship rocket, which is not yet ready. An orbital test flight of the Starship ended in a dramatic explosion in April.
Frey said NASA officials visited SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas a few weeks ago to “find out where they are with the hardware, try to understand more about their schedule.”
Although he found the visit insightful, he said he was concerned “because they haven’t launched,” and would need to do so multiple times before the rocket is ready.
Moreover, the delay in the starship is affected by the need for the spacesuit contractor to know how the suits will interface with the spacecraft, and the need to build simulators for the astronauts to learn the systems.
He added that NASA will update the public in the near future when it has had time to “digest” the information collected during the visit to the starbase.
