At L-3, or three days until a planned launch, Artemis II stands at Launch Complex 36-B at Kennedy Space Center in the morning sun.
Artemis II, March 29, 2026
SpaceX Launches Crew 12 From The Cape
Photo: Charles Boyer
SpaceX launched Falcon 9 early this morning, sending four astronauts on NASA’s Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station occurred at 5:15 AM ET, with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard Crew Dragon capsule ‘Freedom.’
Artemis II, Sunset Photos, February 1, 2026
Artemis II, Night Shots, February 1, 2026
A few photos from February 1, 2026, of Artemis II from Beach Road at Kennedy Space Center.
Looking Back Through Artemis I Photos
Artemis II, NASA’s return to lunar space, is expected to be rolled out to the launch pad this month, with a launch planned for February. That seemed like a good time to review my old Artemis I shots, and I found a few that were pretty good.
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer Facing Power Issues After Deployment
Courtesy NASA
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer is experiencing issues after its launch earlier this week. Trailblazer launched on February 26 aboard Falcon 9 from LC-39A at KSC.
The spacecraft successfully established initial communications with mission operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena, California, at 8:13 PM EST, but telemetry data soon revealed intermittent power problems with Lunar Trailblazer.
Credit: SpaceX
By early Thursday morning, around 4:30 AM EST, the team lost contact with the satellite. However, several hours later, Lunar Trailblazer’s transmitter powered back on, and engineers are now working with NASA ground stations to restore full communication. Efforts are focused on assessing the spacecraft’s power issues and identifying potential solutions.
Lunar Trailblazer was developed as part of NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) program, which funds low-cost, high-risk science missions. The initiative allows small spacecraft to hitch a ride alongside larger primary missions, enabling innovative research while accepting a higher level of operational risk.
Photo: Chris Leymarie / Florida Media Now
Weighing a mere 440 pounds and measuring 11.5 feet wide with its solar panels fully deployed, Lunar Trailblazer is about the size of a dishwasher and relies on a relatively small propulsion system to travel cislunar space to lunar orbit. It is employing a low-energy transfer to save weight and to simplify the propulsion system aboard the spacecraft.
Artemis II Core Stage Move to VAB, July 24, 2024
After berthing in the Turn Basin by the Press Center yesterday, the Core Stage of Artemis II was offloaded today and moved into the VAB. The process began around 9 a.m. EDT and took nearly three hours until the 212-foot rocket traveled the relatively short distance—perhaps 1/2 kilometer—to the VAB.
IM-1 Mission Close To End; More CLPS To Come Soon
Due to its final position on the lunar surface, Intuitive Machine’s IM-1 Nova-C “Odysseus” lander will cease operations within 24 hours. That will be two days earlier than planned. Still, IM said in an update this morning that they continue receiving data from the first American lunar lander to successfully touch down on the moon’s surface in over fifty years.
In a post on the company’s website and also on the X platform, Intuitive Machines said this morning that
Photo: Intuitive Machines
Flight Controllers continue to communicate with Odysseus. This morning, Odysseus efficiently sent payload science data and imagery in furtherance of the Company’s mission objectives. Flight controllers are working on final determination of battery life on the lander, which may continue up to an additional 10-20 hours.
The images included here are the closest observations of any spaceflight mission to the south pole region of the Moon. Odysseus is quite the photographer, capturing this image approximately 30 meters above the lunar surface while his main engine throttled down more than 24,000 mph. Another day of exploration on the south pole region of the Moon. (27FEB2024 0835 CST)
After the lander is in the darkness of lunar night and its batteries are exhausted, the mission will end. That endpoint was originally scheduled for sometime Thursday, February 29th, but will occur early due to the angle and final resting position of Odysseus. Because it is on its side, rather than standing vertically, the amount and strength the lander receives to provide power through its solar panels is less than optimal.
As for the final results of the experiments aboard Odysseus, we will have to wait for them to be released by NASA and Intuitive Machines.
Next CLPS Missions
While IM-1 is near its end, NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is really just getting started with planned lunar landings in support of both the Artemis program to return humans to the moon and also lunar science in general.
Firefly Aerospace
Blue Ghost M1, by Firefly Aerospace, is set to launch in the third quarter of this year aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. “Firefly is excited and ready for our Blue Ghost Mission 1,” Trina Patterson, VP of Marketing and Communications told Talk of Titusville. “We got next!”
image: Firefly Aerospace
The 2 x 3.5 meter spacecraft’s landing target is Mare Crisium (Latin for “Sea of Crises”) a spot that is barely visible to observers with the naked eye. It will, according to Firefly, carry “ten NASA-sponsored payloads” and is designed to last “for an entire lunar day (about 14 Earth days), and well into the freezing lunar night.”
Intuitive Machines IM-2
In the fourth quarter of this year, Intuitive Machines will try again with IM-2, its second Nova-C lander. It will land in the southern polar region of the moon, this time carrying a drill (PRIME-1) combined with a mass spectrometer, to attempt harvesting ice from below the surface among other experiments. Like IM-1 and Firefly’s Blue Ghost M1, IM-2 is planned to fly aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on its initial journey to space.
Astrobotics, the Pennsylvania company that built the Peregrine lander that failed to reach the moon earlier this year, has its VIPER lander slated to head towards the lunar South Pole region later this year as well.
2025 will also see multiple CLPS missions to the lunar surface. Intuitive Machines, Firefly and Draper Laboratories all have missions penciled in for next year.
Artemis Program Timelines Pushed To The Right
Photo: Charles Boyer
NASA announced today that the Artemis program has encountered new delays, causing a shift in the timeline of planned launches.
Artemis II is now slated for September 2025, with Artemis III now slated for September 2026 according to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a news conference held this afternoon. Artemis IV, the first mission to the Gateway lunar space station, remains on track for 2028. “As I continue to say, we will launch when are ready,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. Free is the third highest-ranking executive and highest-ranking civil servant. He is the senior advisor to NASA.
Originally slated for late 2024, Artemis II has been delayed due to technical issues that have cropped up in the program since the Artemis I launch in 2022. Those issues range from problems encountered with batteries for the Orion capsule during testing. Artemis III, the planned landing on the moon has also encountered delays as SpaceX works on its Starship Heavy launcher and with it the human lander needed to touch down on the lunar surface.
Artemis II
Rumors had been floating around in the space industry that NASA might choose to repeat the Artemis I mission with Artemis II, but the agency made it clear today that Artemis II will remain “the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon.”
“[Artemis I] was so successful that additional tests were added in the course [of the mission],” remarked NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. Prior to launching, it must first solve some technical issues that have arisen since Artemis I splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near California on December 11, 2022.
Photo: NASA
Heat Shield
The Orion capsule experienced unexpected loss of char layer pieces during the re-entry phase of the Artemis I mission, prompting NASA and prime Orion contractor Lockheed Martin to open an investigation into the issue to find the root cause of the unexpected material loss, as well as develop plans to fix it.
Photo: NASA
“From the test flight, we found one item that we need a little more time to work, and that is the thermal protection system on the […] heat shield,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate in today’s media conference.
Photo: NASA
Kshatriya continued that the review is going “quite well” but NASA wants to assemble the data and understand it quite well before the Artemis II flight. “Before we attempty re-entry from a circumlunar mission like we’ll have from Artemis II that we’re 100% confident that we understand under those conditions.”
Orion Life Support System
“During the acceptance of some components for Artemis III we noticed a failure in some motor valve circuitry that was driving valves on the spacecraft itself,” said Kshatriya. “These components passed testing for Artemis II but did not for Artemis III. That gave us pause and caused us to examine that circuit in a more detailed way. When we examined it, we learned that there was a design flaw in that circuit. Those valve electronics affect many parts of the life support system in the spacecraft, in particular the CO2 scrubbing system. Once we recognized the design flaw […] it became very clear to us that it was unacceptable to accept that hardware and we have to replace it in order to guarantee the safety of the crew.”
“The way to replace that given the current configuration of the spacecraft, the access to those components, the access to those bays is going to take us quite a bit of time to get to,” Kshatriya continued. “Every connector that we touch as part of that replacement operation will have to be tested after we’re done and we’ll have to put the vehicle through functional testing afterwards. We know how to fix it,” Kshatriya said. “We just need to make sure that we take the time to do it according to the workmanship standards that we expect for a human-rated vehicle.”
Launch Tower
NASA has a new launch tower that they plan to use for the next Artemis mission. The 380-foot tall (115 meters) tower connects to NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), which is set to launch the Artemis II crew of four astronauts around the moon.
Photo: NASA
NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems team has been performing tests and applying upgrades for the new tower. They recently conducted a launch day demonstration for the Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“There are new capabilities being on-ramped for the mission,” said Kshatriya. “We have new facilities at KSC to enable rapid turnaround for propellant loading, as well as [new capabilities] for the loading of the crew and the egress of the crew.”
New Abort System
Photo: NASA
“For the launch vehicle, we have a new abort system that will be activated in an integrated way across the stack and of course with the spacecraft, we have a new life-support system and its ability to respond to those aborts. Those are all added, and of course those will support the crew and to support crew safety,” Kshatriya said.
“We’ve qualified Orion to survive [the abort environment.] We have, however, as part of that qualification campaign found a few cases where we believe there could be some deficiencies in the performance of the electrical system in particular some of the batteries that we need to make sure we understand how they are enduring those environments.”
“We’re still very early in that investigation. We’ve not yet developed a forward path. Multiple parallel options [exist] to fix this issue,” said Kshatriya. He added that “We also have a lot of options to determine whether or not we believe those environments are accurate and we have a lot of testing to do, and we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves the time to do that. Crew safety is going to drive our decision making there.”
NASA did not comment about any new in-flight abort systems test in today’s teleconference.
While these delays may be frustrating to the public, perhaps NASA Administrator Bill Nelson put it best today when he echoed Jim Free by saying that “we’ll fly when we are ready to fly.”
For the space agency crew safety is the first priority followed by mission assurance. The simple truth is that not many people will remember the delays five years in the future, but no one would ever forget a disaster. NASA has made mistakes rushing launches in the past and it is showing a dogged determination to not the repeat those mistakes again. That’s as it should be, not only for NASA, for America and for space exploration, but also to the crew of the Artemis missions and their families.
Inside NASA’s Transporter-Crawler
Ever wondered what the inside of NASA’s Transporter Crawler looks like?
In 2014, I was part of a NASA Social event, and as part of the “insider” tour we got to go inside and look around in the Crawler that was used for Apollo and the Space Shuttle, and is now used for Artemis.
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