The delay was caused in particular by a dispute between NASA Blue Origin, the company of Jeff Bezos, whose complaint to the US space agency on your choice of alunisseur SpaceX, was recently dismissed.
Le Monde with AFP
The Moon will wait a bit. The return of astronauts to the lunar surface, as part of the US program Artemis, was delayed from 2024 to 2025 “at the earliest”, announced on Tuesday, November 9, NASA.
The date of 2024 was set by the government of Donald Trump but was widely regarded as almost impossible to hold. This delay was relatively expected, but this is the first time that NASA officially recognized. The US space agency expected including the resolution of a legal dispute concerning the development of future alunisseur to announce a new schedule.
“We lost almost seven months in dispute, and this has probably pushed the first human landing in 2025 at the earliest,” said his boss Bill Nelson, told a news conference.
But “there are other reasons,” he added. The 2024 date set by the previous administration was not “technically feasible”, he has dealt. He also criticized the lack of funds allocated by Congress in recent years for the development of the alulner. This mission, which must take the first woman on the Moon, is named Artemis 3.
The mission test without astronaut scheduled for February 2022
Bill Nelson has announced that the mission Artemis 2 will be the first program with astronauts on board but did not land on the Moon, had become “a potential date of departure in May 2024”. This second mission, which was previously announced for 2023, “will go farther than any human has ever made any. Probably about 65 000 km above the moon and return to Earth,” said the NASA boss.
Artemis 1, the first test mission to the moon that include it, no astronaut on board, is its still scheduled for next February 2022, as announced recently.
All of these missions will use the new giant rocket NASA named SLS, which will propel the Moon the Orion capsule. She is now fully assembled at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, waiting for takeoff.
The cost of developing the capsule in which astronauts find, was increased from 6.7 billion to 9.3 billion (8 billion euros) to Artemis 2, said M . Nelson Tuesday. But the astronauts will then be transferred on a alunisseur order to land on the moon and leave.
The last human presence on the moon dates from 1972
The construction of this alunisseur was entrusted to SpaceX. Named Starship, it is currently under development in Texas. The work between NASA and SpaceX on this machine had to be stopped after Blue Origin, which was also nominated for the award of this flagship contract, filed a complaint against the choice of the space agency, saying the process selection was unfair. This complaint was dismissed last week by a federal. Court
“Even though we were on a break, SpaceX teams have been able to advance,” said Kathy Lueders, Associate Administrator of NASA. Talks resumed now Elon Musk “to fully understand the facts progress,” she said.
SpaceX must succeed on his side landing without astronaut on the moon, a demonstration as part of NASA’s requirements for this contract. The date of the test is not known, but it will take place “at some point before the landing of humans,” said Bill Nelson.
The Artemis program, which must also take the first person of color on the Moon, echoed the NASA Apollo program in the 1960s, but is it intended to establish a lasting presence on the moon and prepare trips to Mars.
The first men to set foot on the Moon were part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, and the last time humans went there was in 1972, with Apollo 17.