NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced new delays Thursday for the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon’s surface for the first time since 1972.

Artemis II, the program’s first human spaceflight test that was already pushed from 2024 to late 2025, now won’t fly until at least April 2026. Artemis III, the planned moon mission, is now scheduled for mid-2027.

“The endeavor like Artemis over a half a century after Apollo is hard,” Nelson said Thursday. “It’s the pinnacle of new possibilities. It’s the most daring, technologically challenging, collaborative, international endeavor that humanity has ever set out to do.”

The delay is primarily due to issues arising from the damage to the heat shield of the uncrewed Orion capsule that flew in 2022 on the Artemis I mission.

“The heat shield performed in unexpected ways, and since then we have been studying the data to determine the best path forward,” Nelson said about understanding the safety risks facing the Artemis II astronauts.

“We’ve conducted expansive testing including analyzing samples from the heat shield,” he said. “We were able to recreate the problem here on Earth and now we know the root cause and this has allowed us to devise a path forward.”

Teams unanimously approved sticking with the hardware for Artemis II and only adjusting the reentry trajectory, instead of replacing the heat shield. The Artemis I mission’s Orion capsule endured temperatures of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit coming in at speeds near 25,000 mph. The heat shield suffered more than 100 cracks, some in fist-sized chunks, that were much more invasive than the normal charring NASA expected.

When Orion descended using a method of skipping in and out of the atmosphere to reduce speed, NASA thinks that caused the unexpected heat shield damage.

Before it can launch, NASA still needs at least a year to go through stacking the Space Launch System rocket that’s used to launch Orion. Nelson said that will also allow more time to work on the crew capsule’s life-support system.

“We need to get this test flight right to ensure our success in our return to the moon and our safe return to Earth in order for our Artemis campaign to proceed,” Nelson said.

Artemis II was targeting as early as September 2025, but will now get eight more months to prepare — with Artemis III moving from a September 2026 target to eight months later, as well.

“We’re going to do all in our power with our international partners to launch earlier,” Nelson said.

The U.S. government and its partners — Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and European Space Agency — are looking to explore the moon’s south pole and potentially use ice resources to support a lunar base. Ice can be broken down into fuel and oxygen. A presence on the moon is a steppingstone to sending humans to Mars.

Nelson noted that despite the delay, the U.S. is still ahead of the Chinese government’s announced intention to land on the moon by 2030. He has continuously voiced concerns the U.S. would need to beat the Chinese to the south pole to ensure access to the moon’s resources.

He said he thinks the plan to move forward with what is ultimately a short delay will be welcomed by the incoming Trump administration — including Nelson’s likely replacement to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman.

Isaacman is a tech billionaire who bought a series of spaceflights from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk.

“I think the fact that we have gone so laboriously” and made the “right and safe decision, it will allow Artemis II to be launched in a very timely fashion,” he said, noting the alternative would’ve been ripping off the heat shield.

That would have resulted in at least another year delay for Artemis II and a push of Artemis III until late 2028, Nelson said.

“I think it will be received very well by the new regime,” he said.

Artemis II would fly around the moon, but not land, on an eight-day mission, launching from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-B with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

“Sometimes in space, delays are agonizing and slowing down is agonizing and it’s not what we like to do,” Wiseman said, but from the crew perspective they needed to understand the root cause of the heat shield damage. “We took the time. This was a very, very open process. The crew certainly never felt like there was a door closed to us. We never saw any hidden data. It was all open discussion.”

He said having an independent review team helped give him confidence in the final decision. “We really appreciate the willingness to take the risk to actually slow down and understand the root cause,” he said.

The crew of Artemis III has yet to be announced but plans are to include the first woman to step foot on the moon. That mission requires SpaceX to develop a lunar landing version of its in-development Starship spacecraft and Axiom Space to complete new spacesuits.

Only 12 men have walked on the moon as part of six successful landings between 1969 and 1972 during the Apollo program.

Nelson feels optimistic about the future of the program even if parts of future Artemis missions shift to the new administration.

“I think we are handing to the new administration a safe and reliable way forward,” Nelson said. “We’ve got that wrapped up with a bow and it’s on its way.”

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