Critical Questions Space Security Artemis Rewritten: NASA’s New Moon Plan, Its Risks, and Whether the U.S. Can Still Beat China PublishedApril 20, 2026 By Shreya Chandra Download PDF In early 2026, NASA made a consequential change to the Artemis program: Artemis III was no longer planned as a crewed lunar landing mission. Instead, Artemis III had been changed to a low Earth Orbit (LEO) demonstration flight that would test integrated operations between the Orion spacecraft and one or both commercial lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Under the new architecture, the first crewed lunar landing shifts to Artemis IV, now targeted for 2028.1 NASA also added an extra mission to increase launch cadence, standardized the early Space Launch System (SLS) configuration, and publicly embraced a more aggressive long-term goal of building a permanent lunar base under its new “Ignition” initiative. This schedule change aims to reduce technical and operational risks during the lunar landing by first testing the human landing systems and conducting docking operations closer to Earth, before attempting such activities near the Moon. But this change also introduces new risks.
