For the first time since the 17 Apollos in 1972, NASA has officially owned a spaceship that is expected to officially fly humans to the moon.
Lockheed Martin, the leading contractor of Orion Space Capsule, transferred ownership of Artemis II Spacecraft on Thursday to the Kennedy Space Center agency’s Exploration Ground Systems Team Base.
The Artemis II is scheduled to be released by KSC by April 2026, bringing NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day mission around the moon, but not on the moon. Its launch date is a repeatedly delayed day after the completion of the rude Artemis I mission in late 2022.
“We want to achieve the pace of our annual flights. We’re not there yet,” said Kirk Shireman of Lockheed Martin, head of the Orion program. “The faster you fly, the faster you produce the vehicle, the cheaper you get, the lower the costs and the more profitable the public, the more we all know.”
Artemis II will be Orion’s third flight into space. This was originally part of a constellation programme launched under President George W. Bush. It is designed to be launched on top of a giant space launch system rocket for Deep-Space Missions, built into what became Artemis.
Orion made a short test trip to space in 2014, flying the Artemis I mission in 2022, orbiting the moon without a crew.
That flight brought Orion back to Earth with an unbearable temperature of nearly 24,500 miles, at 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The unexpected damage discovered in the protective coating on the Heat Shield has prompted an investigation that forced NASA to punt the Artemis II for another decade from the original timeline.
Recently, NASA in late 2020 under President Trump’s first administration, had maintained its unrealistic goal of flying the Artemis I in 2021, Artemis II and Artemis III in 2023, but in 2024 it was intended to bring humans back to the moon.
Artemis I flew a year later than planned. In addition to the issue of Orion Heat Shield, the damage to the mobile launcher due to the £8.8 million thrust created by the SLS rocket was a major factor in the Artemis II, which first slipped down in 2024, 2025 and early 2026.
NASA has confirmed that all partners in the Artemis program can go flying in February with deadlines exceeding the dates, while maintaining Artemis III on NASA’s calendar for the summer of 2027. Artemis III relies on SpaceX to develop a practical version of the spacecraft rocket to act as a human landing system.
“We’re even working to accelerate work production for flights from the Artemis 3, 4, 5 onwards. NASA has worked with us to encourage us to continue doing that,” Shireman said. “The direction we’re getting from NASA is, ‘Hey, we have to fill the dates, and if you can do better than those dates, it would be great if you can surpass them,’ and that’s how we’ve been working. ”
He said the new issue that came up late last year with Orion’s batteries lies in the team projecting the final delivery at the end of May.
“I think we are very proud to not only have been able to hold that date, but also accelerated that date,” said Lockheed, who has returned to almost a month. “That’s pretty incredible on a complicated spaceship.”
Orion will eventually be stacked on top of the SLS rocket in the vehicle assembly building, and then the finished rocket and spacecraft can launch the pad at the end of the year for testing that the rocket and spacecraft on top of the mobile launcher will hold it until NASA launches.
Sileman said he believes NASA is happy with Lockheed’s performance.
“It wasn’t all sailing smoothly,” he said many issues had been discovered and resolved before it became a threat to the schedule. “People are really working so hard and maybe a bit tired. So they’ll take their breath here for 24, maybe 48 hours. Then we’re going to hit it again for Artemis III.”
Shireman said Lockheed has no signal from NASA to pull back from its long-term plan with Artemis, despite the future of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft that could move in a new direction during the second Trump administration.
The delay to Artemis, along with the bulging costs, has been found to have critics including billionaire Jared Isaacman, who has been appointed as the next NASA administrator and is waiting for confirmation votes in the Senate.
Isaacman told the senator he was taking part in the plan, at least through Artemis III, especially as the US is trying to compete with China’s plans to land on the moon. However, after achieving the lunar landing, the country should consider commercial alternatives such as SpaceX spacecraft and the new Glen of blue origin, as well as new Glens to achieve its lunar goals.
Shireman has continued to cut down for current plans to fly Orion over SLS in the short term, despite the possibility of plans being changed.
“You can fire Orion with the new Glen and create an architecture,” he said. “But if you add new elements that don’t exist and you haven’t started working on them, that’s where the time comes.
“So the fastest way to the moon is to undo American boots on the moon by using Artemis III SLS and Orion.”
But he pitched the spaceship and kept it in any part of what the future of deep sea exploration was.
“In the end, we were able to pivot towards something different,” Siléman said. “We want to be part of bringing Americans back to the moon and sustainable moon program, and if the administration wants to revise architecture, we’re happy to work with them.”
Original issue: May 2, 2025, 12:24pm EDT
