NASA on track for summer 2027 Artemis III orbital test of moon landers

NASA has said it remains on track to launch four Artemis III astronauts in summer 2027 from Kennedy Space Center on a 14-day mission in low-Earth orbit, where the crew will dock with and test lunar landers engineered by Blue Origin and SpaceX (Florida Today).

The mission will involve three of the world’s most powerful rockets — NASA’s Space Launch System, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and SpaceX’s Starship — in a carefully sequenced orbital rehearsal. Blue Origin will first launch a Blue Moon test lander into orbit; NASA will then launch the crew aboard SLS and Orion, which will rendezvous and dock with the Blue Moon; finally SpaceX will launch a Starship test lander, and Orion will undock from the Blue Moon and dock with Starship.

The mission is a key testbed step before Artemis IV in 2028, which would be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. The revised architecture — adopted by NASA in February, which reworked Artemis III from a landing attempt into an orbital demonstration mission — is confirmed by a second outlet’s reporting (Tech Times).

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was scheduled to deliver the Artemis updates at a 2pm briefing at the KSC Press Site on Friday, with the agency reiterating its aim to return American astronauts to the lunar surface and eventually build infrastructure for a moon base.