According to the latest report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General, the earliest date for the next moon landing is 2026.
Last week, NASA announcedthat the Artemis programme would be delayed by at least a year to 2025, it now looks very likely that the ambitious space programme will be completed in 2026 at best. The latest report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General says that the organisation is facing serious challenges and that work is still at a very early stage, so it could well be years before the mission to the moon is completed. "We estimate the next moon landing to be sometime in 2026 at the earliest" - says the document at.
Originally scheduled to land on the moon in 2024, there have been growing signs over time that the target date is not sustainable. Among other things, legal wrangling has hampered the programme, with Blue Origin founder and CEO Jeff Bezos repeatedly challenging NASA's decision (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) after the space agency awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX company the contract to build the Artemis lunar module. NASA was originally going to work with two companies, but due to a lack of funding, SpaceX won the contract.
The last time a man set foot on the Moon was in 1972, as part of the Apollo programme, but this will be the first time a woman and an astronaut of colour have been on a mission.
