ORLANDO, Fla. – Concerns about SpaceX’s progress in developing its Starship mega rocket will likely mean that the Artemis III moon landing won’t happen in 2025 as targeted, according to a new report by the Government Accounting Office.
The GAO report says NASA and its partners have made significant progress with the Artemis program and efforts to return humans to the moon.
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The space agency selected SpaceX’s Starship to serve as the Human Landing System for the Artemis III mission to land on the moon in 2021. So far, the rocket has failed to reach orbit, after exploding during the first test of the fully integrated system in April and again last month.
The GAO report says the project has delayed eight of 13 key events by at least 6 months, and a large volume of technical work to support the Artemis mission still needs to be done. The report said SpaceX had already set an ambitious schedule that was shorter than the timeline average for NASA’s major projects, and it was unrealistic to think the schedule could be adhered to.
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After the April explosion, NASA officials said the timing of Artemis III could slip to at least 2026. But the GAO suspects it will be later than that.
“GAO found that if development took as long as the average for NASA major projects, the Artemis III mission would likely occur in early 2027,” the report states.
The report also says NASA is experiencing some delays with Axiom, the company contracted to design the modern space suits for the mission. GAO says aspects of the suit are being redesigned because the original design “did not provide the minimum amount of emergency life support needed” for the mission.
The GAO says NASA is currently reviewing the schedule for the human landing system.
NASA, meanwhile is moving forward with Artemis II, the mission that will precede the moon landing and take astronauts to the lunar orbit. Three astronauts and one Canadian astronaut are expected to make that trip, which is targeted for no earlier than November 2024.
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