Artemis III in Earth orbit in summer 2027: Orion to dock with Blue Moon and Starship, Moon landing in 2028

NASA on October 23 presented its updated plan for Artemis III, now targeted for summer 2027 in low Earth orbit rather than as a Moon landing, Spectrum News reports. Orion will spend two days docked with a test version of Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander and about two hours with Starship V3, which the crew will not enter.

The crew are Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio and ESA's Luca Parmitano. The first crewed landing is now planned for Artemis IV in 2028. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says assembly and integration time has been halved, with a fuelling test planned by year-end.

Lessons of Artemis II

Artemis II launched on April 1 and splashed down off San Diego nine days later. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen travelled 406,771 kilometres from Earth, farther than any humans before, beating Apollo 13's record.