Link: https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/nasa-cancels-artemis-iiis-crewed-landing

Last week, NASA announced that its Artemis II mission will be pushed to April at the earliest, due to issues with its helium tanks. Now, it's broken the news that the Artemis III follow-up mission will totally cancel its original goal of landing astronauts on the Moon.

Instead, Artemis III—now scheduled to take place in 2027—will be another crewed flight without a landing phase, followed by Artemis IV, a crewed lander mission, hopefully in 2028.

I'm actually kind of glad to hear this because I was worried about the safety of the astronauts . . .

Happy that they're being cautious with all this. Don't want any more deaths on NASA's watch. But this is also pretty humiliating. I also feel for those astronauts cause they were probably REALLY looking forward to the trip.

Indeed. I’m glad they didn’t let their dick measuring w/r/t China get the better of them.

I can’t believe NASA stuck with LH2 propellant. That shit can sneak out of anything, including metal tanks. Same reason your birthday ballon is inflated but on the floor after a few days, the helium scadoodled and left the O2 behind.

Oh sure, LH2 has more lifting power but SpaceX launches 10x as many ships with their methaLOX engines. Even Saturn V ran on LOX in the 60’s.

At what point is it a sunk cost and NASA builds a more reliable fuel system? These delays can’t be cheap or productive.

Really drives home just how much of an effort and achievement the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were back in the 1960s.