NASA has made sweeping changes to the Artemis Program that might see the agency launch four crewed missions to the Moon by 2028. On Friday, administrator Jared Isaacman announced addition of several lunar missions before humans set foot on the Moon’s surface in 2028.
Notably, Artemis III is no longer the first landing mission of the program as previously planned. It has been altered as a crewed test flight targeted for mid 2027, pushing the landing to Artemis IV (2028).
President Trump gave the world the Artemis Program, and NASA and our partners have the plan to deliver. We will standardize architecture where possible, add missions and accelerate flight rate, execute in an evolutionary way, and safely return American astronauts to the Moon,… pic.twitter.com/Qjm6BD5Ipi
— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) February 27, 2026
NASA gets serious about the Moon
In a video statement, Isaacman said that these changes are to ensure NASA and its partners deliver on the Artemis Program which was established by US President Donald Trump in 2017.
“To be overwhelmingly clear, we did not stretch out our timeline or delay anything. What we did is insert additional missions, standardized, so we can actually achieve the national policy that President Trump set out to return American astronauts to the Moon, and build an enduring presence to stay,” he told Fox News.
The changes announced include not just one but two Moon landing missions in 2028 – Artemis IV and Artemis V. Artemis III, which should’ve been first, will now be utilised to test docking capabilities of the Orion spacecraft with a Moon lander built by SpaceX or Blue Origin in Earth orbit.
Isaacman has said that NASA needs to increase its launch cadence to built “operational muscle memory” like it did with previous programs such as Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle. He also criticised the Biden administration during which NASA launched the first and the only Moon mission of the Artemis Program – Artemis I in 2022.
“That’s being corrected now,” Isaacaman told Fox News. “You need to standardise, you need to launch with cadence. That’s how you get back to the moon. That’s how you stay. President Trump’s 100% behind that.”
Isaacman has also said that NASA will launch one mission every 10 months instead of three years.
The agency currently has its eyes set on Artemis II – the crewed mission with four astronauts that will return after orbiting the Moon. It has been delayed beyond March due to a helium flow issue with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s second stage and it’s currently set for launch in April.
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