Artemis III

Artemis III was redesignated in February 2026 from the first crewed lunar landing to a low-Earth-orbit SpaceX Starship lander test, a programme change made by Administrator Isaacman when he cancelled the Block 1B and Block 2 SLS upgrades. The mission now targets 2027. The SLS core stage rolls from Michoud Assembly Facility on 20 April 2026 and will travel by Pegasus barge to KSC, where the four RS-25 engines are to arrive no later than July 2026. The Orion crew module and ESM-3 are already inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at KSC, with initial power-up complete.

The 2027 schedule is conditional on five open Artemis II engineering items closing: the Pressure Control Assembly, ESM pressurisation valves, wastewater vent, O2 manifold helium redesign, and re-entry sensor limits. None has a publicly committed fix date. Separately, ESM-3 readiness depends on whether the valve anomaly that ran at 10 times the predicted rate on Artemis II has been corrected at the manufacturing level, a question ESA has deferred to the June 2026 ESA Council.

The redesignation deferred the first crewed lunar landing to Artemis IV, now targeting 2028. That sequence gives China's 2030 crewed landing target very little margin to absorb any further Artemis slippage. The physical pace of hardware movement to KSC is a signal of intent; it does not close the five engineering items.