NASA delays mission to send astronauts back to the moon

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Nasa has once again pushed back its next mission to send astronauts to the moon - which has come 50 years after the Apollo moonshots.

Administrator Bill Nelson said the space agency's bid to fly four astronauts around the moon and back, as part of the Artemis programme, is now targeted for April 2026.

It had been scheduled for September 2025, after being pushed back from this year. Officials said the delay had been caused by a lengthy investigation into heat shield damage from the capsule’s initial test flight two years ago - while other spacecraft improvements were also still needed.

This bumps the third Artemis mission — a moon landing by two astronauts — to at least 2027, when Nasa had been aiming for 2026. READ NEXT: Mars once had water and a 'habitable' past, experts have discovered Nasa’s Artemis programme, a follow-up to the Apollo moonshots of the late 1960s and early 1970s, has completed only one mission so far.