NASA’s first moon landing since 1972 is DELAYED until 2025 due to costs and Blue Origin litigation

NASA’s Artemis mission that will send the first woman and next man to the moon will not land on the lunar surface until 2025.

The rescheduled date was announced Tuesday during a live update from the American space agency.

During the live briefing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the crewed test flight of Origin and SLS on Artemis II are now targeting May 2024 – thus pushing the lunar landing to the following year.

Nelson says the seven months of litigation over the Blue Origin lawsuit, the coronavirus pandemic and unexpected costs increases have all played a roll in the schedule change.

Nelson says ‘we’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation’ with Blue Origin suing NASA for choosing SpaceX to build its lunar lander, along with an increase in costs that are necessary for developing crafts crucial for the missions. 

The NASA Administrator also called out Congress during the briefing for not providing enough funds to build the human landing system and ‘the Trump administration target of a 2024 human landing was not grounded it technical feasibility,’ Nelson explained.

‘Going forward, Congress has made it clear that there must be competition for the 10 plus moon landings in the future. There will be the need of a significant increase of funding for the competition and that is going to be starting with the 2023 budget.

‘After all, the Chinese space program is increasingly capable of landing Chinese taikonauts much earlier than originally expected.’ 

However, Nelson pledged that NASA has promised to be aggressive in all ways possible to beat other nations from putting boots on the moon.

 Much of the delay stems from Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, which sued NASA in August, citing NASA had originally intended to award multiple contracts for the lunar lander –  but instead, only awarded Elon Musk’s Space as the the sole provider for the $2.91 billion award.