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The main objective of this mission will test the ability of the Artemis III astronauts—which have not yet been named, but may be in the coming months—to fly to Orion for one or both of the lunar lander and stand with the lander.
NASA did something similar with the Apollo program, with the Apollo 9 mission in March 1969. During that mission, the two Apollo 9 astronauts entered the Lunar Module and separated from the Apollo Command Module. They he did several jobsincluding flying as low as 9.9 kilometers to the ground, and 74 kilometers back, before the Apollo spacecraft came back to rest.
How mature will the riders be?
It is unclear, however, how similar testing will be on Artemis III. A new release from NASA said: “Knowing the capabilities of Blue Origin and SpaceX, NASA is also reporting on the progress of the project.
This suggests that the Artemis III spacecraft will not even enter the Starship and/or Blue Moon, let alone fire missiles or separate from Orion.
This poses a serious problem for Isaacman and the rest of NASA’s leadership. If they fly Artemis III in 2027, the stated goal, they will meet one or two people who are about to mature. (NASA’s press release calls them “pathfinders.”) If NASA decides that none of the crew will enter the landing zone, it’s possible that no vehicle will have life support.
This boils down to a well-established principle in the aerospace industry: try it if you are flying. If NASA waits to fly Artemis III, then it will have a chance to fly with a more reliable vehicle, that is, closer to landing on the Moon than being the first prototype. It also raises the possibility that the Artemis spacesuit, developed by Axiom Space, will be available for testing.
But if NASA waits to fly Artemis III, it will lose the chance to land on the moon with Artemis IV. And that’s important, because when Isaacman says that NASA and China’s race to return humans to the Moon will be decided in “months” not “years,” he’s not wrong.
