NASA Won't Land on the Moon in 2024, Why?

 


NASA's ambition to land astronauts on the lunar surface again in 2024 has had to be postponed. The US space agency has announced that the Artemis mission, which will take astronauts to the Moon, has been postponed until 2025.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the delay was due to several factors. One of them is a lawsuit filed by Blue Origin to NASA because of a Human Landing System (HLS) contract issue.


Blue Origin filed the lawsuit because it did not accept that NASA only gave SpaceX the HLS contract. Now the lawsuit has been dismissed by the court and NASA can resume development of HLS with SpaceX.


"We've lost nearly seven months to litigation, and that prompted the first human landing, probably no earlier than 2025," Nelson said at a press conference, as quoted by TechCrunch, Wednesday (10/11/2021).


The Artemis program is a series of missions to be launched by NASA to bring astronauts back to the Moon, nearly 50 years after the Apollo program ended. HLS itself will be the last capsule that will land astronauts on the lunar surface.



Due to this delay, the series of Artemis missions were also postponed. The Artemis-1 mission, which is an unmanned mission to test Space Launch System rockets and the Orion capsule, will launch as scheduled in early 2022.


Artemis-2, which is the same as the previous mission but carries a crew of astronauts, will be launched in May 2024. Meanwhile, Artemis-3, which will carry astronauts to the Moon, will be launched in 2025.


Apart from the Blue Origin lawsuit, Nelson said the development of this mission was also hampered by costs and deadlines. The launch schedule for 2024 set by the Donald Trump administration is said to be not based on technical feasibility, and the US Congress is said to have not provided sufficient budget.


Nelson also cited the COVID-19 pandemic as another reason for the delay, as it caused supply chain disruptions and affected the workforce.


In his announcements, Nelson also repeatedly mentioned China's rapidly growing space program. He emphasized that NASA will move aggressively, but still put security and safety first, to beat competing countries.


"The statements made by China's space program, which includes the Chinese military, give an indication that they are going to be very aggressive," Nelson said.

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