Nasa Announces Artemis III Mission No Longer Aims To Send Humans To Moon (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180868954
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/02/27/1854230/nasa-announces-artemis-iii-mission-no-longer-aims-to-send-humans-to-moon
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/feb/27/nasa-changes-delays-moon-missions
> The abrupt shift in strategy was laid out by the space agency's recently confirmed administrator, Jared Isaacman. Announcing the changes on Friday, he said that Nasa would introduce at least one new moon flight before attempting to put humans back on the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century, in 2028.
>
> The new, more incremental approach would give the Nasa team a chance to test flight and refine its technology. As part of the changes, the Artemis II mission to fly humans around the moon this year, without landing, would also be pushed back from its latest scheduled launch on 6 March to 1 April at the earliest.
>
> "Everybody agrees this is the only way forward," Isaacman told reporters at a news conference. "I know this is how Nasa changed the world, and this is how Nasa is going to do it again."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/feb/27/nasa-changes-delays-moon-missions
Just cancel already (Score:4, Interesting)
Artemis has been a pork laden boondoggle since its inception. Just cancel this turd already.
Re: (Score:2)
> America is broken in so many ways, but having something like Artemis might help stitch it back together.
If it wasn't bad in every way, maybe. But it is, and it should be allowed to die and the money spent on a more sensible project. The best time to kill the project was immediately. The second-best time would have been between then and now, earlier rather than later. But NASA doesn't even seem to want to get to third best.
Re: (Score:2)
The required reliance on Shuttle era parts and infrastructure is what doomed Artemis from the beginning. This was done of course to keep the political money flowing. I'm all for NASA succeeding but the powers to be have not allowed that to happen. Politicians are broke, not America.
Nitpicking (Score:2)
Shouldn't "Nasa" be displayed as "NASA"? Mixed upper and lower -case implies it's a name or a word. All caps implies it's an acronym (or initialism).
(...slow Friday...)
Re: (Score:2)
The Guardian follows the BBC writing style for acronyms which uses mixed case like this.
Re: (Score:2)
you're lucky the Guardian didn't spell it NSaA
Re: (Score:3)
It must be DEI right? Because repeated budget cuts and shifting goals with every administration is not the most sensible answer.
Re: (Score:1)
No, I am not blaming DEI for Artemis being a ridiculous waste of money, only backed for the pork and implemented by Old Space in order to make the most money for them by throwing away rocket engines that were built to be reused.
I am saying, as any decent person does, that woke racism and sexism is an abomination that must be wiped out. Especially where it is most prevalent - government jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
Which astronauts do you feel were not qualified for mission?
Re: (Score:1)
What do you think are the chances that the ones chosen to fulfill Biden's quotas for vagina possession and skin color just happened to also be the best candidates from, what, 8,000 people ?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Racism and sexism existed before DEI. That was the reason of creating DEI in the first place.
Is it an imperfect solution ? Absolutely. Is it better than what was there before ? Absolutely.
Strait white males have been so used to being over-represented for so long that they feel under-represented when they are actually represented accurately.
Re: (Score:1)
There is no over-representation of anybody when people are hired on merit.
DEI means no-one is being represented accurately, they are there to fill quotas.
How can any decent person be proud of getting a job that way ? "Oh, you're the black guy Biden demanded, oh, you must have the vagina that he told us we had to bring along". What a fucked-up way to go through life. What a fucked-up picture to present to the world.
Re: (Score:2)
> How can any decent person be proud of getting a job that way ?
You have that backwards as usual, not surprising from a mentally challenged white supremacist, but I repeat myself. How can any decent person be proud of getting a job because other white people suppressed brown people for centuries? You didn't earn that.
Re: (Score:2)
You have that backwards as usual, not surprising from a demented hateful woke cunt.
Re: Good moves (Score:2)
This is actually quite simple, it gets misrepresented and misimplemented a lot.
The way DEI is supposed to work is as the secondary sort key AFTER merit. A total ordering on merit is usually impossible, so you first find the merit equivalence classes, and then within the groups that have equivalent merit, you ensure racial equity.
There may be some cases so specialized that a total ordering on merit only is feasible. But they are rare.
Re: (Score:2)
"you ensure racial equity."
== You racially discriminate.
In this case they are not even trying to "ensure racial equity" - they are (were!) simply meeting Biden's demand for a vagina and black skin.
Re: Good moves (Score:2)
Are you saying those on this crew are not qualified?
Re: (Score:1)
I am saying they were chosen because of orders that they include a black guy and a vagina-possessor which is disgusting racism and sexism.
Our planet should be stopping racism and sexism, not exporting it.
Re: (Score:2)
Are they qualified candidates? It's as simple as that. There could have been 100 highly qualified candidates with different areas of strength at which selection then becomes subjective.
Humans are biased. People are going to inherently select someone that looks like them, all else being equal. If you can't acknowledge that, then that's probably why you spend so much time complaining about DEI.
I don't agree with quota hiring.. but if the people going to space are highly qualified to do so, how can y
Re: (Score:2)
How many of the 8,000 candidates were also qualified ? How many better-qualified whites / men / asians / jews / mexicans / etc etc were skipped to fulfil Biden's black skin + vagina quota ?
Humans are biased. So you take sex and race out of the hiring process, not embed it to promote the hateful woke agenda.
> There's no single test (as far as I know) that selects the best astronaut.
From Reddit:
"Astronaut Selection Process Tips,
I'm a retired Air Force officer and have many friends who are astronau
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it's of utmost importance to select the right crew that's not landing on the Moon.
Chinse will beat us (Score:2)
I'm calling it: The Chinese will land on the moon before the U.S. does again. Their program is much less ambitious (single launch and capsule/lander more like Apollo). It requires a lot less reinventing the wheel than NASA's convoluted Artemis/Starship combo.
Perhaps that will be the "Sputnik moment" that jolts NASA/congress.
Re: (Score:2)
Also China is more inclined to overlook little things like safety to reach a goal.
Re: (Score:3)
> Also China is more inclined to overlook little things like safety to reach a goal.
Does it still count as a moon landing if everyone dies on impact?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe or maybe not. It still counts if the crew dies after they land due to an air leak though.
Re: (Score:2)
First to die on a orbiting rock is a first none-the-less
Re: (Score:2)
Let's stick with Kennedy's definition of the original moon race: "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly what the U.S. did in the 1960s to get to the moon. There were only 12 crewed Apollo missions. One ended with the death of the whole crew (Apollo I), and another very nearly did (Apollo 13).
Re: (Score:1)
No they are not.
Stupid hater.
In their currency it costs the same money to train an astronaut as it cots the US to train theirs. And a failure is always a public outcry: regardless on which side of the planet you live.
Stupid hater. Did I mention how farking stupid Americans are that hate China for no damn reason except: they can?
Re: Chinse will beat us (Score:1)
The CCP cares too much about appearances to risk the embarrassment of a manned rocket to the moon blowing up. Itâ(TM)s more likely that the American mission will go wrong due to complexities of working with too many contractors and too many stipulations that Congress writes into funding the program.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be interesting to see if that would smack the US out of its current state of “head-up-own-ass”. We’ve gotten too accustomed to winning and we’ve gotten a bit entitled on the world stage.
It might not be enough, though. The truth is that landing a small capsule on the moon using a large but conventional rocket is something that we did over 50 years ago.
I’m really, really, really hoping that the Starship development is a smashing success. If I had to list my top
Re: (Score:2)
My take away from this mission change is that no one at NASA believes SpaceX (or anyone else) will have anything close to ready for them by the time the mission is scheduled. For all the progress Starship is a long, long ways from being able to carry humans, let alone land on the moon, to say nothing about returning.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh I totally agree about Starship’s readiness. Nowhere near ready yet. But at least SpaceX has a focus and intensity.
I get the feeling that the people who work on Artemis simply feel no urgency. Wake up at 10. Put in 2-3 hours of real effort to keep things minimally rolling, and cash a nice salary for the work. No sense of urgency. 30 year old technology. No real consequences if the project is delayed by 6 months. Or a year. Or 5 years.
Starship could fail. Musk is losing focus on space and liq
Re: (Score:3)
Musk at the moment is laser focused on SpaceX. The IPO that is. It will be the vehicle to make the first trillionaire on earth. Mission accomplished.
Proving the conspiracy theorists right (Score:2)
You failed to pass the great filter test, now you will live in an AI generated slop universe instead of the real universe.
Re: (Score:1)
Well,
I watched the landing life ...
How own can think it was a conspiracy and it never happened is beyond me.
ugh...where are the editors? (Score:1)
NASA not Nasa
You know what would be a giant leap for mankind? (Score:2)
Affordable health coverage. Fuck the moon.
Re: (Score:1)
That's not why you're not getting Affordable health coverage.
Cynical translation (Score:3)
> Nasa would introduce at least one new moon flight before attempting to put humans back on the lunar surface
They haven't finished designing and testing the gold plaque with Trump's name on it. Getting it down to a manageable / transportable size and weight seems to be the main sticking point. Apparently, "someone" wants it to be visible from Earth and doesn't understand the impractically of that. /s
Re: (Score:2)
If I had mod points...This got a chuckle out of me.
This is the right thing to do (Score:1)
I'd much rather let the Chinese get there the first time before we get there again than have a foreseeable disaster kill the crew.
Re: (Score:2)
Captain dipshit is the guy that fought to get Isaacman confirmed. Isaacman just made a very difficult decision, possibly saving NASA the tragedy of getting people killed by a premature landing mission. Last week, Isaacman took a very large and necessary shit on Boeing and Starliner as well, demonstrating a degree of candor rarely applied to the prerogatives of a major defense contractor.
Some chumplet will chime in that all this is happening for the benefit Musk and SpaceX. This will be despite the fac
Re: (Score:3)
Musk's Starship has problems a-plenty too
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree with your sig more than your post. If pain is failure leaving the body, why did I feel so good when my divorce went through?
Re: (Score:2)
> If pain is failure leaving the body, why did I feel so good when my divorce went through?
Task failed successfully?