NASA overhauls Artemis moon plan, cancels Boeing rocket upgrade

On February 27, NASA unveiled a significant shake-up of its flagship Artemis lunar program, canceling a multibillion-dollar upgrade to Boeing’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The agency also announced an additional test flight closer to Earth, while insisting that its goal of landing astronauts on the moon by 2028 remains intact.

Under the revised plan, Artemis III – previously slated to mark the program’s first crewed lunar landing – will now launch in 2027 as a test mission in Earth orbit, Caliber.Az reports per foreign media.

The flight will send astronauts aboard Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule atop Boeing’s SLS rocket to dock with one or two commercially developed lunar landers. The actual moon landing has been pushed to Artemis IV, scheduled for 2028.

NASA said the change is designed to accelerate the overall cadence of missions and address longstanding criticism over the slow pace of SLS development. The agency has struggled with repeated delays and technical issues, and a separate crewed mission to fly around the moon has already slipped by weeks, potentially months.

The overhaul comes after years of missed deadlines and rising costs tied to the SLS rocket. NASA’s Inspector General has estimated the Artemis program has cost roughly $93 billion to date, drawing scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdogs.

The overall Artemis framework was established during President Donald Trump’s first term and aims to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century. But mounting delays, management challenges and a complex architecture involving multiple contractors have raised doubts about whether NASA can meet its 2028 deadline, particularly as China advances its own lunar ambitions.

“With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.

As part of the restructuring, NASA plans to seek an alternative to Boeing’s Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), a more powerful upper section of the SLS rocket that had been expected to debut on the vehicle’s fourth launch. While Boeing will continue building the SLS core stage, losing the upper-stage contract would mark another setback for the aerospace company, whose EUS program has faced schedule slippages and ballooning costs projected to reach nearly $2.8 billion through 2028.

Steve Parker, head of Boeing’s space division, said the company was prepared to support a faster launch tempo. “As NASA lays out an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet the increased production needs,” he said.

NASA has separately contracted Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to develop lunar landers. The revamped Artemis III mission will test the rival landers in Earth orbit before they carry astronauts to the moon, a move the agency says will reduce risk.

Under the previous sequence, the landers would have had limited time for in-space testing before transporting crew. NASA has urged SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate development as the timeline tightens for vehicles capable of docking with Artemis III next year.

Despite the changes, significant uncertainty remains over whether Boeing can meet the new schedule and whether NASA can sustain a higher launch rate with a rocket that historically has flown only once every several years.