CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The date has not moved. NASA said Friday that Artemis III will still launch in summer 2027, sending four astronauts to low Earth orbit for 14 days of work with two commercial lunar landers.
Administrator Jared Isaacman led the briefing at Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 23, joined by other agency leaders. NASA posted a short summary afterward. It called Artemis IV the first Artemis mission that will land on the lunar surface, and it said the agency is speeding up work to hold a 2028 date for that landing.
Artemis III itself will not touch down. This one is a rehearsal, flown close to home.
First off the ground, if the plan holds, is a lander with no one in it, according to Florida Today, which covered the news conference. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 test lander is to ride a New Glenn rocket up from Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons said the lander can loiter in orbit for as long as a month, waiting.
The crew follows from pad 39B, on the Space Launch System with Orion on top. Day three brings the first docking: Orion meets Blue Moon, the hatch opens, and the astronauts go inside the lander’s crew cabin to run its life-support systems and controls.
“We’re launching three of the most powerful rockets in the world and undertaking what is likely the most complicated launch campaign ever undertaken.”
SpaceX flies third. A Starship test lander launches from pad 39A, and on day eight Orion leaves Blue Moon behind and docks with the nose cone of Starship for about two hours. After that, Orion comes home and splashes down.
Docking is not the whole flight. The crew will also check Orion’s systems and crew survival suits and run human research, science experiments and technology demonstrations, according to a NASA summary cited by Florida Today.
The rehearsal follows Artemis II, which flew in April. Four astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — looped around the far side of the Moon on that nine-day flight and reached 252,756 miles from Earth, the farthest any humans have traveled, Florida Today reported.
Florida Today also reported that NASA wants American astronauts back on the lunar surface before China, with the groundwork laid for a Moon base that could support a permanent human presence.
“And when American astronauts do take their first steps on the lunar surface in 2028, a rover and the first elements of an enduring human presence on the moon will already be waiting for them,” Isaacman said.
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