Artemis III Mission Will Be Postponed Until 2027 According To GAO

Artemis' mission is expected to be pushed back until 2027 (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) predicts that the Artemis III mission, the landing and exploration of astronauts on the moon, will not occur in 2025.

This estimate comes after GAO observed progress from the Artemis mission through the development of the Human Landing System (HLS) aircraft, variants from Starship, and astronauts' spacesuits. According to GAO, these two components will delay the launch of Artemis III.

Since the beginning of HLS construction, GAO has predicted that the launch of Artemis III in 2025 is too ambitious. The large project of the United States Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) will definitely take a long time to complete so that Artemis III cannot be excluded.

"We found that if the development of HLS took months like NASA's big projects, then the average Artemis III mission would likely occur in early 2027," GAO wrote in its report.

In addition, flight missions in 2025 are expected to be difficult to achieve due to Starship's always problematic test flight. GAO said that the performance of the Starship's driving Raptor engine is still unknown today.

It should be noted that Starship had two problems with its launch. First in April, the second in November, but GAO didn't discuss the second launch. The first stage of Starship exploded at every launch so SpaceX needed to work extra.

Meanwhile, the design for clothing is also important for Artemis. Unfortunately, the development of this outfit is very slow. GAO stated that there is still a lot of work to be done by Axiom.

NASA's initial design did not provide the minimum amount of emergency life support required for the Artemis III mission. As a result, Axiom's representatives said they might redesign certain aspects of the spacesuit, which could delay its delivery to the mission, "explained the agency.

This whole review is the result of NASA's data, documentation and policy assessments for the Artemis mission. GAO has analyzed contract documentation, contractor risk charts, technology maturation plans, to live interviews with NASA officials.

So far, GAO has launched four reports to directly review the program. With the launch of this report, GAO wants to show the system's development and progress of the Artemis mission.