Overview
- Orion splashed down on April 10 near San Diego with Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen, confirming the crewed spacecraft worked as designed.
- NASA now targets Artemis 3 in 2027 as an Earth‑orbit test of rendezvous and docking with commercial lunar landers, with the first surface attempt moved to Artemis 4 in early 2028.
- SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System remains the biggest unknown, since it has not yet shown a lunar landing or the required on‑orbit propellant transfer under its $2.89 billion award, even as Blue Origin prepares a later lander.
- Axiom’s next‑generation AxEMU spacesuits carry an initial $228 million task order and will be tested in Earth orbit during Artemis 3 before any astronaut uses them on the Moon.
- Program risk grows as suppliers face a shortage of certified cybersecurity assessors for CMMC compliance and NASA contends with roughly $4.1 billion SLS/Orion flights plus proposed deep cuts to NASA science, pressures that could slow deliveries and strain smaller firms.