The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has decided to postpone the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions, which will land humans on the Moon for the first time since 1972. This was reported by Agency Reuters quotes its own sources.
According to the agency’s interlocutors, the reason for the changes in the program of lunar missions were problems with the development and preparation of spacecraft.
Thus, Artemis 2 was postponed from late 2024 to 2025 because problems arose with the batteries of the crew capsules of the Orion spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin. Unreliable batteries will need to be replaced.
The Artemis 3 mission, which is expected to send humans to the Moon at the end of 2025, is also expected to be postponed. That’s because billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX can’t meet deadlines.
The flight preparation plan includes construction of an orbital fuel storage facility. NASA wants to wait for progress on creating space infrastructure for refueling spacecraft, as this phase involves significant risks. The most important of these is the delivery of tens of thousands of liters of supercooled, flammable rocket fuel into space.
Astronauts have successfully Experienced Prototype of a space elevator for landing on the lunar surface.