New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a major overhaul of the agency's Artemis moon program Friday, acknowledging that the agency's plan to land astronauts on the moon in 2028 was not realistic without another preparatory mission first to lay the groundwork.
He said NASA will now add an additional flight in 2027 in which astronauts will dock with new commercial moon landers in low-Earth orbit for detailed tests of navigation, communications, propulsion and life support systems and to verify rendezvous procedures.
That flight, in turn, will be followed by at least one and possibly two lunar landing missions in 2028 that incorporate lessons learned from the preceding flight.
The goal is to accelerate the pace of launches of the huge Space Launch System rocket while carrying out Artemis flights in evolutionary steps — not attempting missions that rely on too many untested technologies and procedures at once.
"We're going to get there in steps, continue to take down risk as we learn more and we roll that information into subsequent designs," Isaacman said told CBS News. "We've got to get back to basics."
Isaacman outlined the plan in an interview with CBS News space contributor Christian Davenport and then again during a news conference Friday.
The announcement came two days after release of a sharply-worded report from NASA's independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel that deemed the existing plans too risky.
The panel raised concerns about the number of "firsts" required by the original Artemis III moon landing mission and recommended that NASA "restructure" the program to create a more balanced risk posture.
"It is interesting that a lot of the things that we are addressing directly go to the points they raised in their report," Isaacman said Friday. "I can't say we actually collaborated on it because I generally think these were all pretty obvious observations."
The revised plan also comes as NASA has been struggling to launch the delayed Artemis II mission on a flight to send four astronauts on a trip around the moon.
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