Put it in pencil: NASA’s Artemis III mission will launch no earlier than late 2027 | SpaceX and Blue Origin tell NASA their lunar landers will be ready for Artemis III in late 2027.

>NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told lawmakers on Monday that SpaceX and Blue Origin, the agency’s two lunar lander contractors, say they could have their spacecraft ready for the next Artemis mission in Earth orbit in late 2027, somewhat later than NASA’s previous schedule.

>This mission, Artemis III, will not fly to the Moon. Instead, NASA will launch an Orion capsule with a team of astronauts to rendezvous and potentially dock with one or both landers in Earth orbit. The details of the Artemis III flight plan remain under review, with key questions about the orbit’s altitude and the configuration of the Space Launch System rocket still unanswered.

>A mission to low-Earth orbit, just a few hundred miles in altitude, may not require NASA to use up an SLS upper stage that is already built and in storage, saving the unit for the following Artemis mission to attempt a landing on the Moon. A launch into a higher orbit would require the upper stage, but it would allow NASA to perform tests in an environment more similar to the Moon. NASA is buying a new commercial upper stage, the Centaur V from United Launch Alliance, to pair with the SLS rocket after flying the last of the rocket’s existing upper stages.

>Also in question is which of the landers—SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon—Artemis III will attempt to link to in space, or if NASA will try to incorporate both landers into the flight plan, assuming they are ready. Two months ago, Isaacman announced Artemis III would no longer land at the Moon’s south pole. The original Artemis III mission profile would have tried to accomplish too much. With that plan, the first time humans docked with and boarded a Starship or Blue Moon spacecraft would have been near the Moon, a quarter-million miles and several days away from Earth.

>Instead, Artemis III will be a mission akin to Apollo 9, which tested the Apollo lunar lander in Earth orbit four months before Apollo 11’s historic landing at the Sea of Tranquility with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. If something goes wrong in Earth orbit, the Artemis III astronauts will be minutes or hours from home, not days.

Artemis program is a gift that keeps on giving 

SpaceX doesn’t seem on track to deliver anything beyond an orbiting hollow can by 2027. Assuming they get one to actually orbit. Missing anything that resembles a life support system, on-orbit power generation, or the necessary refueling infrastructure, I give SpaceX the same odds to deliver in 2027 as I give Tesla after 10 years of promising those self-driving taxis.