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NASA Moves Moon Landing Deadline Back to 2025
The space agency acknowledged that it cannot return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024, a timeline set under President Trump.

By Joey Roulette
Nov. 9, 2021

NASA is pushing back its deadline for returning American astronauts to the moon’s surface by as much as one year, officials announced on Tuesday. It’s the first official acknowledgment that 2024, the target set when Donald J. Trump was the president, cannot be met.

Instead it will occur sometime in 2025, said Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator who was selected to lead NASA by President Biden earlier this year. He blamed the shifting timeline on a lawsuit over the agency’s moon lander, to be built by SpaceX, and delays with NASA’s Orion capsule, which is to fly astronauts to lunar orbit.

“We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025,” Mr. Nelson said, adding that NASA will need to have more detailed discussions with SpaceX to set a more specific timeline.

“After having taken a good look under the hood these past six months,” he added, “it’s clear to me that the agency will need to make serious changes for the long term success of the program.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/scie ... -2025.html