WASHINGTON — The first crewed landing of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration effort is unlikely to happen before 2027, a report by the Government Accountability Office concluded.
The GAO report, released Nov. 30, found that slow progress on both the Human Landing System (HLS) lunar lander being developed by SpaceX and new lunar spacesuits from Axiom Space would prevent NASA from achieving its currently goal of a late 2025 landing on the Artemis 3 mission.
Much of the report’s emphasis was on HLS development. SpaceX, the GAO concluded, “is facing multiple issues that limit this progress and jeopardize its ability to support an Artemis III mission in 2025.” Those issues include an “ambitious” schedule, delayed progress on its development to date, and significant technical work.
The GAO effectively argued that it was unlikely from the beginning of the HLS program that a Starship lunar lander would be ready by late 2025 given the time typically needed to complete any major project at NASA.
“We found that if the HLS development takes as many months as NASA major projects do, on average, the Artemis III mission would likely occur in early 2027,” the report stated. “The complexity of human spaceflight suggests that it is unrealistic to expect the HLS program to complete development more than a year faster than the average for NASA major projects, the majority of which are not human spaceflight projects.”
The report also noted that SpaceX’s work on HLS was going at a slower pace than projected, taking more than half the overall schedule to reach the preliminary design review milestone, versus an average of 35% for major NASA projects. SpaceX has delayed “multiple key events,” not specified in the report, from 2023 to 2024, compressing the remaining schedule.
The GAO report also flagged the “incomplete” first integrated test flight of Starship/Super Heavy in April. (The report noted, but did not assess, the second…
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