NASA's Artemis 3 astronaut moon landing unlikely before 2027, GAO report finds

美国审计署报告称，美国宇航局（NASA）阿尔特弥斯3号宇航员不太可能在2027年前登月

The Artemis 3 mission, which is now tentatively scheduled to fly in December 2025, may have to wait until at least 2027.

阿尔特弥斯3号任务目前暂定于2025年12月发射，但可能至少要等到2027年。

NASA's endeavor to return humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program with the Artemis 3 mission will likely be delayed because it is jeopardized by "multiple challenges" and an ambitious schedule, the U.S. Government Accountability Office announced Thursday (Nov. 30).

NASA试图通过阿尔特弥斯3号任务将人类首次送回月球，这是自阿波罗计划以来的首次尝试。然而，美国政府问责局（GAO）于11月30日宣布，由于面临“多重挑战”和操之过急的时间表，这一任务可能会被推迟。

Based on interviews with NASA and industry officials and reviewing documentation, the GAO reported it found a significant amount of pending technical work on the human landing system or HLS, a variant of SpaceX's Starship and NASA's mode of transport to the moon's surface. Also remaining is crucial design work to incorporate larger oxygen tanks into the space suits that would be used by astronauts on the moon, the report stated.

根据对NASA和行业官员的采访以及文件审查，GAO报告称，他们发现人类着陆系统（HLS）上有大量的未完成技术工作，该系统是SpaceX的星际飞船和NASA到月球表面的运输方式的变体。报告还指出，还有一项至关重要的设计工作是将更大的氧气罐整合到宇航员在月球上使用的宇航服中。

Related: SpaceX Starship problems likely to delay Artemis 3 moon mission to 2026, NASA says

相关报道：NASA称，SpaceX星际飞船问题可能会使阿尔特弥斯3号登月任务推迟到2026年

The HLS will use up its propellant reservoir just getting into orbit, so it will need to be refueled before heading to the moon. As per the current plan, a multi-step effort would see a Starship fuel depot placed in orbit first, followed by multiple tankers to transfer methane and liquid oxygen into that depot so that it is fully refueled before going to the moon.

HLS将在进入轨道时耗尽其推进剂储存库，因此在前往月球之前需要加油。根据目前的计划，将采取多步骤措施，首先在轨道上放置一个星际飞船燃料库，然后使用多个油轮将甲烷和液态氧转移到该燃料库中，以便在前往月球之前加满油。

Headquartered at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the HLS program is still officially working toward a December 2025 launch, and aiming to complete its development in a total of 79 months — about a year sooner than the average for major NASA projects, most of which don't involve human spaceflight. But GAO says that timeline is unlikely since complex technical work remains, including figuring out how to transfer propellant in orbit for which "SpaceX has made limited progress in maturing those technologies."

HLS项目总部位于阿拉巴马州的马歇尔航天飞行中心，目前该项目仍在朝着2025年12月的发射目标努力，并计划在总共79个月的时间内完成开发——这比NASA主要项目的平均水平要快一年左右，其中大多数项目不涉及载人太空飞行。但GAO表示，由于像如何将轨道推进剂转移这种复杂的技术工作仍然存在，而“SpaceX在这些技术的成熟方面进展有限”，因此这一时间表不太可能实现。

The HLS program and SpaceX have delayed eight out of 13 key milestones by six months to a year, causing two of the postponed milestones to now take place in 2025, the same year as the currently scheduled Artemis 3 launch. If the HLS lander development takes on average as much time as other major projects at NASA, the Artemis 3 mission would occur in early 2027, the report stated.

该报告指出，HLS项目和SpaceX已经将13个关键里程碑中的8个推迟了六个月到一年，导致其中两个被推迟的里程碑现在将在2025年进行，与目前计划的阿尔特弥斯3号发射年份相同。如果HLS着陆器开发平均需要的时间与NASA其他主要项目相同，那么阿尔特弥斯3号任务将在2027年初进行。

For that launch timeline to be met though, a second pressing concern related to a design change in space suits being developed by Axiom Space must be resolved. Earlier this year, the company unveiled a prototype of the suit, which it would rent to NASA for the Artemis moon landing missions. So far, Axiom has completed two milestones in work related to developing the space suits but they are still in the early development phases, the latest GAO report said.

然而，要在这一时间表完成发射，还需要解决与Axiom Space正在开发的太空服设计变更有关的第二个紧迫问题。今年早些时候，该公司展示了这款宇航服的原型，并计划将其出租给NASA用于阿尔特弥斯3号登月任务。据最新的GAO报告称，到目前为止，Axiom已经完成了与开发太空服相关的两个里程碑，但仍处于早期开发阶段。

Much of the pending work appears to be related to the suit design. NASA requires Axiom to develop a suit that can provide 60 minutes of emergency life support, but "NASA's original design did not provide the minimum amount of emergency life support needed for the Artemis 3 mission," according to the report.

许多未完成的工作似乎与宇航服设计有关。 NASA要求Axiom开发一种能够提供60分钟紧急生命支持的宇航服，但根据该报告，“NASA最初的设计并未提供阿尔特弥斯3号任务所需的最低限度的紧急生命支持”。

So Axiom now plans to rearrange components of the space suit such that it can accommodate larger oxygen tanks but if that's not possible, it will need to alter the current design which would take more time.

因此，Axiom现在计划重新安排太空服的组件，以便它可以容纳更大的氧气罐，但如果不可能的话，它就需要改变当前的设计，这将需要更多的时间。

If NASA officially delays the launch date for Artemis 3 to 2027, it would end up being one year sooner than its original goal of 2028. The Trump administration in 2019 had set a timeline of 2024, which NASA eventually pushed out to the current launch estimate in December 2025.

如果NASA正式将阿尔特弥斯3号的发射日期推迟到2027年，它将比最初的目标2028年提前一年。特朗普政府在2019年设定了2024年发射的时间表，NASA最终将该发射时间表推迟到2025年12月。

But even NASA found that 2025 date to be optimistic; in June 2023, agency leadership pointed out that delays with HLS/Starship development made it unlikely that Artemis 3 would be able to meet that timeline.

但即使NASA觉得2025年的日期是乐观的；2023年6月，机构领导层指出，HLS/Starship开发的延迟使得阿尔特弥斯3号的发射不太可能满足该时间表。