The next mission under NASA's Artemis moon program could still launch next summer as planned, but "anything can happen" given the remaining development work for the two lunar landers needed for the mission, one of the Artemis III astronauts told Reuters.
NASA's third Artemis mission will be the first to involve the program's moon landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.
Unlike Artemis II, the spacecraft will stay in Earth's orbit to perform crewed docking demonstrations with Orion, a capsule whose job is to transfer the astronaut crew to the landers after getting them into space.
"The biggest thing is having faith in the team to pull together, with the same rationale that anything can happen," Artemis III mission specialist Andre Douglas said in an interview on Monday, when asked if Artemis III is still on track for launch next year.
Douglas, 40, fellow NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik and Frank Rubio, as well as Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, were tapped this year as the crew for Artemis III, seen as a key rehearsal before NASA attempts to put astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028 in Artemis IV.
Both companies' lunar landers have had schedule delays while facing an unchecked list of complex development tasks, such as demonstrating the ability to store and delicately transfer super-cooled propellants in space and dock with another object in orbit.
"Those are the major ones," Douglas said of the milestones the contractors need to achieve before the mission.
While some industry sources doubt the landers will be ready in time for a 2027 mission, NASA has been optimistic, with administrator Jared Isaacman citing good progress for "the parts that are in NASA's greatest control," referring to the NASA-owned Orion and its Space Launch System rocket.
Starship and Blue Moon have received billions of dollars in NASA funding while their development remains privately managed, a commercial-focused contracting model that has given NASA relatively little control over the manner and speed with which the companies build their landers.
"We just have to keep putting our heads down, leaning forward, and trying to meet the ideal timeline, which would be June of next year," said Douglas, who works with both SpaceX and Blue Origin on their lander development.
He added that he and other NASA officials plan to meet with SpaceX and Blue Origin over the next few months to determine their spacecraft's readiness.
The Artemis III mission had originally been planned as the program's first moon landing until February, when Isaacman imposed sweeping program changes that turned Artemis III into an extra practice mission. The agency is pressed to return to the moon quickly as it races China, which is targeting 2030 for its own first moon landing.
Artemis III will be the first trip to space for Douglas, who spent years shadowing the Artemis II crew as a backup. A systems engineering scholar and naval architect, Douglas has a background in the US Coast Guard that taught him how to be adaptable to rapid change, he said.
"I learned in the military that the plan only lasts for 10 minutes," he said. "You have expectations, but then you're also ready in the background for change."
