Artemis Reboot: NASA Announces Extra 2027 Test Flight, Two Moon Landings in 2028

Artemis Reboot: NASA Announces Extra 2027 Test Flight, Two Moon Landings in 2028

The last time I reported on the Artemis II crewed mission to orbit the Moon, NASA’s “wet dress rehearsal” was cut short when engineers detected a liquid hydrogen leak.

Now, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman is acknowledging that the agency’s plan to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028 was unrealistic. Therefore, schedules and plans have been changed.

He said NASA will now add an additional flight in 2027 in which astronauts will dock with new commercial moon landers in low-Earth orbit for detailed tests of navigation, communications, propulsion and life support systems and to verify rendezvous procedures.

That flight, in turn, will be followed by at least one and possibly two lunar landing missions in 2028 that incorporate lessons learned from the preceding flight.

The goal is to accelerate the pace of launches of the huge Space Launch System rocket while carrying out Artemis flights in evolutionary steps — not attempting missions that rely on too many untested technologies and procedures at once.

“We’re going to get there in steps, continue to take down risk as we learn more and we roll that information into subsequent designs,” Isaacman said told CBS News. “We’ve got to get back to basics.”

In addition to changing the goals and objectives related to “Artemis II”, Isaacman has also announced the addition of Artemis IV and Artemis V missions.

The agency announced Friday that Artemis III, Artemis IV and Artemis V will all be launched before the end of President Donald Trump’s second term. Artemis IV and Artemis V will be missions where astronauts return to the surface of the Moon.

“To be overwhelmingly clear, we did not stretch out our timeline or delay anything. What we did is insert additional missions, standardized, so we can actually achieve the national policy that President Trump set out to return American astronauts to the Moon, and build an enduring presence to stay,” Isaacman told Fox News Digital.

“Artemis II, we’re going to launch in a matter of weeks [and] go around the moon,” Isaacman explained. “Artemis III will launch by mid 2027 with the aim to buy down risk and low Earth orbit for subsequent [Moon] landing attempts in 2028.”

Isaacman noted that a 3-year gap between Artemis launches was looming and that the better approach would be to model the launch schedule on the successful Apollo program. The goal is to cut the gap to roughly every 10 months, tying a higher launch frequency directly to safety and learning.

During NASA’s storied Apollo program, he said, astronauts’ first flight to the moon was followed by two more missions before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. What’s more, he added, the Apollo moonshots followed one another in quick succession, just as the earlier Projects Mercury and Gemini had rapid flight rates, sometimes coming just a few months apart.

Twenty-four Apollo astronauts flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972, with 12 of them landing.

“No one at NASA forgot their history books. They knew how to do this,” Isaacman said. “Now we’re putting it in action.”

The Artemis II mission remains unchanged and is likely to launch in a matter of weeks if all goes well.  Artemis III, now targeting mid-2027, will be a crewed low‑Earth‑orbit flight in which Orion will rendezvous and dock with one or both commercially built lunar landers (from SpaceX or Blue Origin).

If Artemis IV and V succeed as planned, they could mark the beginning of a new era of sustained lunar exploration, one built on steady progress, iterative learning, and collaboration between NASA and commercial partners.

By expanding the use of other launch systems being developed by private firms alongside the Space Launch System, the U.S. could improve both safety and mission pacing, ensuring that trips to the Moon become a regular part of NASA’s operations rather than rare generational events.

For the first time in decades, it feels possible that Americans might not have to wait another fifty years to see humans walk on the lunar surface again.

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