Artemis program

Over the last few weeks we’ve been following the travels of Intuitive Machine‘s IM-1 mission. The first of its kind lander made several firsts, the biggest being bringing the commercial market to the lunar surface for the first time. While the mission has ended for now, there’s a lot to talk about good old Odysseus.

On Valentines Day SpaceX showed us its love for lifting rockets off into space with a double header from both LC-39A and SLC-40. The two launches, roughly eight hours apart, were for Intuitive Machines‘ Nova-C lunar lander and a classified payload for the US Space Force.

This month was expected to be a big one for lunar exploration with two new landers attempting soft landings on the Moon‘s surface. However, once again, landing on the Moon seems to be the next major hurdle for anyone, even the United States.

NASA announced in a stacked press conference that the agency is delaying its much anticipated Artemis 2 mission over safety concerns with the Lockheed Martin Orion spacecraft. Now slated for a September 2025 launch date, the delay also extends to Artemis 3 which is planned to liftoff one year after Artemis 2.

At a meeting of the National Space Council in Washington, DC, Vice President Kamala Harris announced an international astronaut will land on the Moon through Artemis before the end of the decade.

According to NASA, Starship‘s third flight test will feature a major demonstration needed for the overall success of landing humans on the Moon with the Artemis program. In a meeting, slides showed Starship Flight 3 being the first mission to demonstrate in-orbit propellent transfer. However, the schedule is still up in the air.

Most likely outdated renders of SpaceX’s Starship rocket in its Human Landing System configuration show a much more refined design that could show where the company is heading. Although their authenticity is not 100% confirmed yet.

Early Friday morning, Astrobotic’s first lunar lander departed its offices in Pittsburgh for a drive down to Florida to be integrated onto the Atlas V for launch as soon as December. A flight the company has been waiting to do for years.

Blue Origin Friday unveiled its Mk1 version of its Blue Moon lander that holds a contract with NASA for crewed Artemis missions. Mk1 is capable of delivering three-metric tons of cargo to anywhere on the lunar surface. However, it is only cable of landing cargo and science payloads, and is not reusable.

Between the increasing need and decreasing budgets, NASA’s Deep Space Network is running into constraints during big missions like Artemis 1. DSN’s director is concerned the lack of funding to expand deep space communications and the continued requirement to drop everything for these missions will harm NASA’s other science missions.

NASA’s Artemis program is slated to land astronauts on the Moon by the end of 2025, but SpaceX’s hurdles with its lunar lander technology could potentially push the much-anticipated mission into 2026, warns a Senior NASA manager.

In this exciting era of space exploration, NASA’s Artemis missions are poised to redefine the boundaries of human achievements as the agency sets its sights on landing the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon. 

In its latest earnings report, Northrop Grumman disclosed an “unfavorable estimate-at-completion adjustment” for the Habitation and Logistics Outpost module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway.

Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule is a spacecraft designed for deep space exploration. Developed in collaboration with NASA, the spacecraft will be used to send astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon under the Artemis program.

NASA’s Artemis program and the preparations for the Artemis 2 mission are in full swing. Flight hardware is arriving at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to construct the giant SLS rocket, and crewed hardware is also being delivered. The Artemis astronauts’ first ride on launch day is now in procession of Canoo’s fully electric crew transport vehicles.

Friday morning, NASA announced that the Blue Origin-led team won NASA’s contract to be the agency’s second Human Landing System for Artemis crewed missions to the Moon. Right now, its first Crewed mission is set to be Artemis 5 in 2029.

It’s April already, which means NASA has shared the crew flying on Artemis 2. In an event at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, alongside numerous other NASA and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) leaders, announced the four-person team.

NASA’s crawler-transporter has been certified as the heaviest self-powered vehicle on Earth by Guinness World Records.

The agency’s Exploration Ground Systems was presented the certificate on March 29, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Crawler-transporter 2, CT-2, is more than 6.6 million pounds and has the ability to transport up to 18 million pounds. It has technically held this record since 2016, after the completion of modifications it received to support the Artemis program and the Space Launch System rocket and its mobile launcher tower.