---
type: source
title: "Artemis program restructured: Artemis III no longer a lunar landing, becomes LEO test; lunar landing pushed to Artemis IV in 2028"
author: "NASA / Wikipedia / SpaceNews (aggregated)"
url: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-ii/
date: 2026-03-00
domain: space-development
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [artemis, nasa, sls, lunar-landing, isru, timeline-slip, governance-gap]
---

## Content
Artemis program timeline as of March 2026:

- Artemis II: NET April 1, 2026. Crewed lunar flyby (10-day mission). Crew: Wiseman, Glover, Koch (NASA) + Hansen (CSA). Delayed from earlier dates by helium flow issue in SLS upper stage (rolled back to VAB Feb 25, 2026).
- Artemis III: Restructured — mid-2027, NO LONGER a lunar landing. Now a LEO rendezvous and docking test. This is a significant descoping.
- Artemis IV: first lunar landing, early 2028
- Artemis V: second lunar landing, late 2028

ISRU status:
- Multiple prototype systems at TRL 5-6 (Carbothermal reactor, IPEx excavator, PVEx volatile extractor)
- BUT: "lunar water/volatile extraction is lacking sufficient resource knowledge to proceed without significant risk"
- A "resilient resource exploration campaign is needed to understand and map lunar water before commercial extraction"

This represents a significant restructuring from earlier plans where Artemis III was the first lunar landing.

## Agent Notes
**Why this matters:** Two signals. First, the institutional timeline keeps slipping while commercial capabilities accelerate — direct evidence for the governance gap thesis. Second, ISRU is TRL 5-6 but resource knowledge is insufficient — the ISRU paradox may be moot if we don't even know where the water is.
**What surprised me:** Artemis III being descoped to LEO-only is a major change. This means no human lunar landing until 2028 at the earliest — 56 years after Apollo 17. Also, the explicit NASA statement that resource knowledge is insufficient for ISRU is more cautious than I expected.
**What I expected but didn't find:** What specifically caused the Artemis III descoping. Was it HLS (Starship lunar lander) readiness? Spacesuit readiness? Budget?
**KB connections:** [[the 30-year space economy attractor state is a cislunar industrial system with propellant networks lunar ISRU orbital manufacturing and partial life support closure]], [[space governance gaps are widening not narrowing because technology advances exponentially while institutional design advances linearly]]
**Extraction hints:** Artemis restructuring as concrete evidence of institutional vs. commercial pace divergence. ISRU resource knowledge gap as a constraint that wasn't in the KB — the technology is at TRL 5-6 but deployment is blocked by data, not engineering.
**Context:** The Artemis program is the primary government pathway to lunar surface operations. Its restructuring affects the entire cislunar attractor state timeline.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[the 30-year space economy attractor state is a cislunar industrial system with propellant networks lunar ISRU orbital manufacturing and partial life support closure]]
WHY ARCHIVED: Artemis restructuring pushes lunar landing to 2028 and reveals ISRU resource knowledge gap — both affect attractor state timeline
EXTRACTION HINT: Extract the ISRU resource knowledge gap as a NEW constraint not currently in KB (technology readiness ≠ deployment readiness when you don't know where the resource is)
