NASA delays Artemis III lunar landing to 2028

NASA delays Artemis III lunar landing to 2028

The lunar calendar has just lost a milestone. NASA has cancelled the Artemis III moon landing —the mission intended to return humans to the lunar surface— converting it into a low Earth orbit flight scheduled for 2027, where docking with SpaceX and Blue Origin landers will be practiced. The actual descent is moved to Artemis IV and V, now in 2028. Fifty years after the last step on regolith, the return adds another delay and an extra mission.

The news arrived via tweet and regional press clips, echoing immediately. Several messages repeated the same argument: if we reached the Moon in 1969 with a computer as powerful as a Spectrum, there is no technical explanation for why we cannot do it today. The conversation quickly shifted to budget, electoral politics, and suspicion.

Why NASA delays the Artemis III lunar landing to 2028

According to announcements picked up by regional media, the agency adds a new test mission to the lunar program, Artemis III, planned for 2027, reserving the crewed landing for subsequent missions. In practice, the program is reordered: first, dock with private landers in low Earth orbit; then, descend.

Some view this move as a tactical retreat: better to delay than risk failure on camera. Others see it as business as usual, a timeline that stretches whenever costs tighten.

Program cost: $35 billion for SLS and $20 billion for Orion, according to cited figures

Figures circulating online place cumulative spending on the Space Launch System at $35 billion and capsule Orion at $20 billion. All this for a program that has yet to put a boot on the ground. This figure is central to arguments claiming the issue is not technical capability, but the political economy of the project.

Among recurring arguments is that cutting spending on such items is costly at the polls, especially in an election year, and that the risk of public failure outweighs the prestige of arriving first. Conversely, without state backing—and Washington's borrowing capacity—none of these private companies would have reached the launch pad.

Why can't we return to the Moon with current technology?

Here lies the crux. The most common calculation suggests development was expensive, but copying is cheap: blueprints exist, materials are still manufactured, and orbital calculations are done. Under this logic, repeating Apollo should be nearly a workshop task.

Against this, another participant recalls an uncomfortable detail: analog electronics from the sixties were hand-assembled, component by component, and those who knew how to assemble and tune them are no longer active. Finding someone today capable of replicating and adapting those systems would be, in their view, a real problem. Their domestic analogy: copying a 1998 car infrared remote—with encoded transponder—takes twenty days and €400 plus VAT at the official dealer. A locksmith with two old units forgotten in a box charged €250. Technology from 28 years ago that no one produces in series anymore. Extrapolating to a rocket is debatable, but obsolescence is not imaginary for those raising it.

Apollo vs. Artemis: numbers from the precedent

The comparison speaks for itself. Nine crewed Apollo missions completed round trips to the Moon without a single injury, carrying 24 lunar passengers, three of whom traveled twice. That perfect success record wasn't even matched in uncrewed missions: approximately one in three failed. The precedent is used as proof it could be done, and as proof it was too perfect to be true, depending on perspective.

As another message summarizes, missing the landing spot by six kilometers, without beacons or surface guidance systems, isn't exactly a failure—it's quite a miracle. The precision taken for granted by mobile phones didn't exist in 1969.

From Shuttle to SLS: a rocket assembled from reused parts

The program's launcher is, according to circulating technical breakdowns, a mishmash of inherited parts. The solid-fuel side boosters are from the Space Shuttle—those on Artemis II were actually used on Columbia’s launch—the orange central tank is the modified external tank designed to hold engines below and capsule above, and main propulsion comes from shuttle engines. Recycling isn't free or trivial; each adaptation drags along new certifications.

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One derivative point also appears in the thread. Some recall the space race produced technological returns: viscoelastic foams, scratch-resistant lenses, fireproof materials. And, according to another message, the packet-switching network inaugurated in 1970 is part of the infrastructure over which data traffic flows today.

With 2027 and 2028 on the calendar, the question no one fully closes is why a country that sent 24 lunar passengers back and forth in three years cannot repeat it six decades later with more money and better computers. Technical explanations exist. Political ones too. Neither covers the gap.