NASA adopting Apollo’s urgency to build a moon base and land astronauts within two years

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced on Friday that the space agency remains on track to launch Artemis III next summer for a docking exercise with lunar landers from Elon Musk’s and Jeff Bezos’ companies. This two-week mission will only orbit the Earth, but the critical Artemis IV moon landing mission by astronauts, not scheduled until 2028, will proceed as planned.

Isaacman said NASA is adopting Apollo's urgent, intense approach of 1968-1972, with three rapid launches from Cape Canaveral and a new "sortie suit" for the initial moonwalkers to speed up the process and reduce risk. The moon base near the south pole is expected to see its first launch by year's end, with more landers, rovers and orbiters following, potentially ready for astronauts by the time they arrive.