NASA Admits: There Will Be No Artemis “Boots On Moon” Before Late 2028

This very morning, Trump’s guy at NASA — after the dual disappointments, on the two most recent “wet” dress rehearsals we detailed — has made it clear that Trump is unhappy that we won’t have some goofy show-boat junk-mission surrounding the Moon, for this coming Fourth of July (250^th).

So he is announcing a hiring jamboree of some sort — and the goal is to increase the number of missions per year. Yikes. To be clear, I am all for increasing NASA’s science and engineering team budgets. [But I favor safer, robotic missions of high science value — to Mars, and beyond.]

In any event, here is the presser, but not too much of this will get funded after the mid-terms — and almost certainly not, when there is a new occupant at 1600 Penn.:

…As teams prepare to launch Artemis II in the weeks ahead, the Artemis III mission, now in 2027, will be designed to test out systems and operational capabilities in low Earth orbit to prepare for an Artemis IV landing in 2028. This new mission will endeavor to include a rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, in-space tests of the docked vehicles, integrated checkout of life support, communications, and propulsion systems, as well as tests of the new Extravehicular Activity (xEVA) suits.

NASA will further define this test flight after completing detailed reviews between NASA and our industry partners. The agency will share the specific objectives for the updated Artemis III mission in the near future.

NASA’s recently announced workforce directive is a key factor in enabling this acceleration. NASA will rebuild core competencies in the civil servant workforce including more in-house and side-by-side development work with our Artemis partners, enabling a safer, more reliable, and faster launch cadence….