CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA introduced extra delays Thursday in sending astronauts again to the moon greater than 50 years after Apollo.Administrator Invoice Nelson mentioned the following challenge within the Artemis program — sending 4 astronauts across the moon and again – is now focused for April 2026. It have been at the books for September 2025, after slipping from this yr.The investigation into warmth protect injury from the tablet’s preliminary check flight two years in the past took time, officers mentioned, and different spacecraft enhancements are nonetheless wanted.Relied on information and day-to-day delights, proper on your inboxSee for your self — The Yodel is the go-to supply for day-to-day information, leisure and feel-good tales.This bumps the 3rd Artemis challenge — a moon touchdown by means of two different astronauts — to a minimum of 2027. NASA have been aiming for 2026.NASA’s Artemis program, a follow-up to the Apollo moonshots of the past due Nineteen Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies, has finished just one challenge. An empty Orion tablet rotated the moon in 2022 after blasting off on NASA’s new House Release Device rocket.Despite the fact that the release and lunar laps went smartly, the tablet returned with a very charred and eroded backside warmth protect, broken from the warmth of reentry. It took till just lately for engineers to pinpoint the reason and get a hold of a plan.NASA will use the Orion tablet with its authentic warmth protect for the following flight with 4 astronauts, consistent with Nelson, however make adjustments to the reentry trail at flight’s finish. To tear off and substitute the warmth protect would have supposed a minimum of a complete yr’s prolong, officers mentioned.All over the flight check, the tablet dipped out and in of the ambience right through reentry and warmth constructed up within the protect’s outer layer, defined Pam Melroy, NASA deputy administrator. That ended in cracking and asymmetric dropping of the outer layer.The commander of the lunar fly-around, astronaut Reid Wiseman, took phase in Thursday’s information convention at NASA headquarters in Washington. His workforce contains NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.“Delays are agonizing and slowing down is agonizing and it’s no longer what we find irresistible to do,” Wiseman mentioned. However he mentioned he and his workforce sought after the warmth protect injury from the primary flight to be totally understood, irrespective of how lengthy it took.Twenty-four astronauts flew to the moon right through NASA’s vaulted Apollo program, with 12 touchdown on it. The general bootprints within the lunar mud had been made right through Apollo 17 in December 1972.___The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives make stronger from the Howard Hughes Scientific Institute’s Science and Tutorial Media Workforce. The AP is simply accountable for all content material.
