91Ö±²¥

NASA is overhauling and accelerating Artemis, its program to send astronauts back to the moon, the head of the space agency announced Friday.

The agency is aiming to launch more often, more closely following the approach that NASA took in the 1960s during the Apollo program.

“No one at NASA forgot their history books,” Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, said Friday. “They knew how to do this. They’ve had plans like this for a long time. Now we’re putting it in action.”

The sweeping changes are the biggest move yet by Isaacman, who has been administrator of NASA for a little over two months and has talked about focusing the agency on doing the “near impossible.”

Artemis III, which had been scheduled for late 2028, was supposed to land NASA astronauts on the surface of the moon for the first time in more than half a century. Now it will launch in mid-2027 and not even travel to the moon. Instead, it is set to serve as another test flight during which astronauts will practice rendezvousing in low-earth orbit with one or both of the lunar landers that are under development by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

That would set up two landing attempts, Artemis IV and V, in 2028, which would meet President Donald Trump’s goal of sending NASA astronauts back to the moon before the end of his second term.

“It’s ambitious, but with this course correction, we are on a more stable foundation, a more realistic path to the milestones we have ahead,” Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, said.

What will not change is the plan for Artemis II, which is set to send four astronauts on a swing around the moon without landing. NASA, however, had to take Artemis II off the launchpad this week because of a problem with the Space Launch System rocket, eliminating the possibility of a launch in March.

If repairs can be completed in time, the next launch opportunities will run from April 1 through April 6.

One motivation for the transformed Artemis schedule was to decrease the time between missions to less than one year, Isaacman said. Simplifying the Artemis III mission will allow NASA to test out docking procedures and the lunar landers before a moon landing attempt.

This article originally appeared in .

© 2026 The New York Times Company