Status: 11/10/2021 5:46 a.m.
The US space agency NASA has postponed a manned moon landing originally planned by the Trump administration for 2024 for at least a year. The goal was not based on technical feasibility, said the NASA boss.
The US space agency NASA has postponed its goal set by former US President Donald Trump of bringing US astronauts back to the moon by 2024 by at least a year. “The goal of the Trump administration, a landing of people in 2024, was not based on technical feasibility,” said NASA boss Bill Nelson, who was appointed by the current US President Joe Biden.
Instead, the landing should take place at an unspecified time in 2025. With the so-called Artemis mission, US astronauts were supposed to land on the moon for the first time in almost 50 years by 2024, including the first woman. This was announced by the Trump administration in 2019.
Legal disputes lead to further delay
Because the mission has already significantly exceeded its budget in terms of money and time, observers have long doubted that this schedule will be adhered to. Finally, legal disputes had caused postponement: After Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX received an order from NASA in April to develop the first commercial lunar landing device, the unsuccessful space company Blue Origin from Amazon reasons objected to Jeff Bezos. After numerous instances, it was recently finally rejected and NASA announced that it would now continue to work with SpaceX.
The mission is to put four astronauts into lunar orbit on the Orion spacecraft, where two of them will transfer to the SpaceX landing vehicle for the final approach to the moon. The USA was the only country so far to bring twelve astronauts to Earth’s satellite with the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972.