NASA is delaying putting astronauts back on
the moon until 2025 at the earliest, missing the
deadline set by the Trump administration.
The space agency had been aiming for 2024 for the
first moon landing by astronauts in a half-century.
In announcing the delay Tuesday, NASA
Administrator Bill Nelson said Congress did not
provide enough money to develop a landing
system for its Artemis moon program. In
addition, a legal challenge by Jeff Bezos’ rocket
company, Blue Origin, stalled work on the
Starship lunar lander under development by
Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
NASA is still targeting next February for the
first test flight of its moon rocket, the Space
Launch System, or SLS, with an Orion capsule.
No one will be on board. Instead, astronauts
will strap in for the second Artemis flight,
flying beyond the moon but not landing in
2024, a year later than planned. That would