The first Artemis lunar landings might not go to the Moon’s south pole
It appears from remarks recently by one NASA official, that while the south pole remains the agency’s main lunar base target, it is now looking into other landing options in order to make those first manned landing less risky and easier and quicker to achieve.
Amit Kshatriya, NASA Associate Administrator was very vague in his statement, but nonetheless this was what it appears he was saying:
We have opened up the, I would say, the performance specification for the early landing missions in as many ways as we can, in terms of different lunar orbits we want to take, or different other constraints … to make it as agile as possible, to recognize performance limitations in some of the machines we have and let our providers tell us, hey, if you took these constraints out of the way, how could we go faster? So we’re going to do that.
The agency’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, is also pushing to quickly begin sending a lot of unmanned landers to the south pole by next year. Thus, under this plan, we might actually find out first whether there really is water in those permanently shadowed craters, before committing our manned lunar base to this location.
This new approach makes a great deal of sense, especially since the data that has looked into those craters has been very inconclusive, some positive and some negative.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It appears from remarks recently by one NASA official, that while the south pole remains the agency’s main lunar base target, it is now looking into other landing options in order to make those first manned landing less risky and easier and quicker to achieve.
Amit Kshatriya, NASA Associate Administrator was very vague in his statement, but nonetheless this was what it appears he was saying:
We have opened up the, I would say, the performance specification for the early landing missions in as many ways as we can, in terms of different lunar orbits we want to take, or different other constraints … to make it as agile as possible, to recognize performance limitations in some of the machines we have and let our providers tell us, hey, if you took these constraints out of the way, how could we go faster? So we’re going to do that.
The agency’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, is also pushing to quickly begin sending a lot of unmanned landers to the south pole by next year. Thus, under this plan, we might actually find out first whether there really is water in those permanently shadowed craters, before committing our manned lunar base to this location.
This new approach makes a great deal of sense, especially since the data that has looked into those craters has been very inconclusive, some positive and some negative.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Sending in some unmanned recon landers and rovers first rather than sending humans in blind seems a wise move given the considerable uncertainties anent supposed frozen volatiles in perpetually-shaded polar craters. I have long been a skeptic about lunar “water” in particular. It is known that there is a very modest amount of water to be had from lunar surface regolith, but what, exactly, is in those shaded craters is anything but nailed down at this point both in terms of actual composition and quantity.
The other main reason a lunar polar base seems desirable is that perpetual solar power is available there if one builds towers at certain points on certain crater walls to collect it.
That said, there are certainly precautionary reasons to do initial landings elsewhere. The PRC, it seems, does not intend to initially land at the poles either.
Only reason I can see not go to the pole is the close to two week surface stay if going to LLO for rendezvous.
ShadowCam imaged Cabeus Crater where LCROSS clearly showed spectroscopic signatures of water and several organic species. Yet ShadowCam’s image didn’t clearly show ice in Cabeus Crater. So, it appears that it is unable to confirm ice.
DougSpace: What ShadowCam’s images suggest is that if there is any water there, it is locked up in the soil in a way that will require a great deal of processing.
And that “if” remains a major question mark.
Great observation about emerging Chinese program goals, Dick Eagleson.
It is amazing the choices made when your program goal is to actually accomplish a difficult task, rather than simply extract cash out of the public coffers to spread it around favored rent seekers.
We are seeing some welcome reduction in hubris which seems to have been a long time in coming. A recognition that it has been over 53 years since the human race (represented by the US of A) has attempted a manned lunar landing.
Well done Mr. Isaacman.
If we aren’t planning on stating, what’s the point of going again. Let the Chinese deal with all the dust which will be a nightmare coupled with the temp swings and vacuum.
Better use of the minds than arming up to try taking over the world,
Long periods of time between landing and colonization are not unknown here at home. Europeans (Dutch) landed in Australia in 1606, and the first (penal) (British) colony was established in 1788. The Europeans, were, of course, much quicker to colonize North America, being closer, and not chock full of things trying to kill you.
Doubting Thomas,
It’s kind of interesting how the US and PRC governmental lunar programs seem to be converging on a broadly similar plan – send unmanned stuff to the lunar South Pole first, do initial human-crewed landings elsewhere on less challenging terrain at far lower latitudes, send humans to the lunar South Pole region only after it is certain there is some reason to run the extra risks of going there.
That’s on the nation-state space program side of things.
Elon Musk and SpaceX constitute a wild card in all of this. His goal in going to the Moon is to industrialize it ASAP and start churning out AI data center modules that can be yeeted into space by a large mass driver. The key to doing this will be to ramp up both power generation – i.e., solar photoelectric cell fabrication – and metal smelting/forming infrastructure at maximum feasible speed.
The lunar South Pole area has a number of places where power towers of initially modest height could capture solar power continuously to seed an exponential expansion of both generating capacity and tonnage of finished metal and solar cells. Metal and cell production would initially feed the construction of more and ever-taller power towers on less and less favorable sites that could expand from the initial sites in a spiral. As total power production approached a level capable of both continuing industrial production and running the mass driver, metal production would be allocated, more and more, to the latter’s construction and then to the construction of its AI data center module payloads.
Thus, Musk and SpaceX have the incentive, and soon the capability, to ninja both NASA and the PRC anent a consequential base in the lunar South Pole region. He would certainly have the capability to expand such a base from modest beginnings to something quite extensive far faster than NASA or the PRC could.
Musk has no real need of any problematically notional frozen volatiles from shaded craters to further incentivize the starting of a sizable SpaceX presence at the lunar South Pole, but could certainly make use of same if it turns out such actually exist in quantities and compositions worth exploiting. Metal smelting, in any case, generates huge quantities of oxygen which could be used to provide more than 80% of the propellant mass needed to refuel Starship lunar landers on the surface. There is no need to count on lunar polar “water” that may or may not exist.
Given the heavily-cratered nature of the lunar South Pole region, there may well prove to be a usable series of crater wall segments along the azimuth needed by the mass driver that would allow it to be built with a minimum of man-made support structure.
Musk, of course, may have a different progression in mind than what I’ve spitballed here. As the late Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s really hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” And it is definitely a fool’s errand of the first water to try outsmarting Elon Musk.
All of that said, the next few years seem fated to be very pivotal ones anent the future of humankind in space and on the Moon in particular. I hope I’m around long enough to see at least some of it.
A Moon that has very little water, or water that is practically extractable, is a Moon that is much less valuable as an economic opportunity, even to Elon Musk. At least, for the foreseeable future.
But it’s worth finding out if this is the case, or isn’t the case….and it’s certainly true that a lot of the investigative work can be done without human hands present. To that end it doesn’t seem quite as urgent that the first Artemis mission or two has to go to the South Pole — these will really be just test flights anyway.
pawn,
But we are planning to stay – NASA, SpaceX and the PRC. So all three will have to deal with the difficulties of lunar conditions. Of these three entities, I have the most confidence that SpaceX will find ways to deal with all relevant obstacles.
The PRC, given its many current challenges, seems the likeliest to fail to make it to the Moon at all, or, if it manages an initial presence, to fade in the stretch. The PRC has been in a state of serious decline for roughly a decade now and its future only looks worse – and quite limited.
Better use of the minds than arming up to try taking over the world,
I can’t comment usefully on this as I’m not sure which minds – or even which world – you are referring to.
Richard M,
A waterless Moon – i.e., the one we all thought we were dealing with up until a couple of decades ago – would be marginally less useful/attractive/valuable to Elon. “Much less,” I think, seriously overstates the case. Water is readily importable via Starship and is also readily recyclable. Lunar industrial processes of many sorts will differ from their thristy terrestrial equivalents. Water will be needed on the Moon mainly for human consumption and hygiene and for raising foodstuffs. All such uses will be subject to low-loss recycling, something with which we have a lot of experience both here on Earth and in space.
Water is a consumable, and so are all the very valuable other commodities you can make from it. And it takes up a lot of mass — and every kilogram you have to devote to hauling it up all that mass from Earth is a kilogram you can’t devote to equipment or passengers/workers.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to skin the cats in other ways (including ones you suggest, like smelting based extraction). It is rather that it makes the business case harder to close, and Elon, unlike NASA, has to close a business case, at least in the medium term. If anyone *can* figure it out, it’s Elon and his teams of semi-tamed geniuses, but he’s talked about the advantages of water ice before, and I think he would be the first today that its presence in sizable quantities would make his job a good deal easier.
Well, we’ve got several CLPS missions lined up to go get some ground truth over the next few years, so we will know soon enough!
I am just glad Elon has joined the Moon-firsters instead of the Mars firsters…that makes me breathe a sigh of relief.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Elon’s decision to amp up his focus on the Moon right now, but Mars is where the future is. Mars is where you can build a civilization. I think he hasn’t lost sight of that.
Jeff Wright: it’s going to be the Moon and Mars in rough parallel, Mars is still SpaceX’s primary goal. The Moon is useful insofar as it may provide SpaceX an enormous source of income atop Starlink to fund the company’s Mars ambitions.
The other wild card are the NEOs, high in ice as a percent of mass. Grab one of those and you won’t have to lift the water. Cheers –
Yes, if the lunar surface is that poor in water ice, moving a water-rich NEO into lunar orbit or even a Lagrange point could be the kind of thing you see happening in the second or third generation of renewed, sustained human activity on the Moon.
I would like to see Musk make a lunar lander. He could first make a cargo lander then a manned lander after the concept or prototype is proven.
Drop a few cargo pods and you have everything to start that lunar base.
pzatchok: so exactly what SpaceX is doing with lunar Starship already?
Yeah, I mean, isn’t that what Starship HLS is? A lunar lander?
This seems like the best thread to post this: Bloomberg has what may be a scoop of another major change to the Artemis architecture: “NASA is revising its moon-landing plans, reducing Boeing Co.’s role while elevating SpaceX’s Starship rocket to do the job of propelling astronauts to lunar orbit, people familiar with the matter said.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-19/nasa-plans-bigger-spacex-moon-mission-role-in-blow-to-boeing
Non-paywall: https://archive.is/2026.03.19-182336/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-19/nasa-plans-bigger-spacex-moon-mission-role-in-blow-to-boeing
This has yet to be officially confirmed.
All of which raises the question of why NASA even needs Orion and SLS. If all you need them to do is to deliver 4 astronauts to Earth orbit, Falcon 9/Dragon *already* do that, and have a far greater (and reliable, and cheaper) flight record of doing so!
But maybe this is Jared’s way of killing off SLS and Orion in a more indirect way.
Richard Lender: Please make up your mind about your nickname. Either stick with Richard M, or Richard Lender. It makes the discussion here less coherent when people change their nickname willy-nilly.
Richard Lender: This action has been inevitable now for more than five years. It just required Congress (especially Ted Cruz) to realize the obvious facts. The recent authorization bill clearly showed he and Congress finally have come to this realization, so now it appears Isaacman has seen the opening and is pushing through it, as fast as he can.
Richard Lender: I also suggest you reread my essay on the authorization bill from earlier this month:
The Senate cries “Uncle!” on SLS and big goverment with its latest NASA authorization bill
I literally predicted this. The bill gave Isaacman 60 days to develop a new plan launching astronauts to the Moon, with an emphasis on using commercial launch providers. This Bloomberg story is simply reporting this ongoing work.
And let me toot my own horn one more time: I have been saying for almost a year that the real American space program is what SpaceX is doing, not NASA and its Artemis program. This story tells us that Isaacman recognizes this, and is moving to hitch is wagon to that reality.
Hello Bob,
I apologize for this. For some reason the auto fill on my Android keeps defaulting to my actual name, no matter how much I clear the auto fill cache, and that means I have to keep manually correcting it every time I post, until I can figure this out. Let me look into it some more.
P.S. You wrote:
“This action has been inevitable now for more than five years. It just required Congress (especially Ted Cruz) to realize the obvious facts. The recent authorization bill clearly showed he and Congress finally have come to this realization, so now it appears Isaacman has seen the opening and is pushing through it, as fast as he can.”
If Bloomberg’s scoop is true . . . Yes, I completely agree, Bob!
I should clarify, for those who have not or for some reason are unable to read the article, that in this new scheme, Orion would still go to lunar orbit (Starship pushes it out there) , so it would retain the role of Earth Orbit Insertion and the trip back to Earth. But it certainly makes SLS redundant, and it becomes easier to see the path to getting rid of Orion, too.
Let us hope that Jared can make this happen.
Richard M: I think you should just go with your real name. You don’t say anything here very controversial (though nowadays who knows?).
Nate P
March 19, 2026 at 11:12 am
pzatchok: so exactly what SpaceX is doing with lunar Starship already?
I now that’s what they are planning on doing but I am impatient and want to see it soon.
Maybe Robert can ban your one name so you can only post with the other.
It might be faster.
Jeff Wright wrote: “I am just glad Elon has joined the Moon-firsters instead of the Mars firsters…that makes me breathe a sigh of relief.”
It seems to me that Musk has not chosen to go to Moon-first but has chosen to take advantage of lunar resources. He is less interested in lunar bases than in a Martian colony, and it sounds as though if he can man a lunar base with robots then that is OK with him, too.
The problem he and SpaceX have with Mars is that the transit opportunities are few and far between. The speed at which he makes a Mars colony is the same whether or not he lands on the Moon for various resources, so he may as well take advantage of the lunar resources. This does not make him Moon-first, it makes him Moon-too.
For decades there has been an argument among space enthusiasts whether we (meaning NASA) should use our resources to go to Mars or to put a base on the Moon. There are books giving cases for each option. When commercial space took off with gusto, I began to argue that we need not make an either/or choice, any more, because we already had one space company eager to put a commercial base on the Moon (Blue Origin) and another eager to put a colony on Mars (SpaceX). This was an indication that our commercial space companies had a real potential to do what NASA has been expected to do for the past half century. It was an indication of a willpower outside of NASA and government and of an ability to find funding among We the People — outside of government.
Now, however, we have a single private commercial space company that seems poised and able to do both destinations simultaneously. This is far more than we expected from NASA and far, far more than we were getting from NASA.
Robert saying that SpaceX is America’s space program is an understatement. SpaceX alone is doing better than America’s space program, and Blue Origin is doing things similar to America’s space program. If Blue Origin gets better at completing its projects in a timely manner, then it will match and even exceed NASA.
Rocket Lab is not far behind, and there are plenty of other rocket companies coming online that can do well, too. Then there are the satellite companies, especially those that operate satellites and probes rather than just build them. American commercial space is matching any national space program, if not all of them combined, and there are plenty of commercial space companies in other countries around the world adding to that total.
In some ways, this decade is not as exciting as I had expected, but in other ways it is exceeding my expectations as it goes along.
Richard Lender,
More details, especially about which missions will employ this new arrangement, would have been nice to have. In their absence one can only note that there would seem to be no obvious reason why this new Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) architecture couldn’t be implemented as soon as Artemis 4. The main caveat would seem to be the matter of whether or not Orion can stand being pushed from its nose rather than its base during the TLI burn.
Assuming that not to be a showstopper, the main advantage of this new mission profile would appear to be safety. As Apollo 13 demonstrated, two vehicles with independent life support systems are safer, when traveling Moonward as a unit starting in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), than either vehicle would be on its own. This returns at least the Artemis missions involving SpaceX’s lander to a more Apollo-like profile. By making the TLI burn the job of SpaceX’s HLS (Human Landing System) Starship, Orion’s European Service Module (ESM) need only be capable of the Trans-Earth Injection (TEI) burn following HLS ascent and re-rendezvous and docking with Orion in lunar orbit following the surface stay.
It also allows a Low-Lunar Orbit (LLO) parking of Orion while at least part of the crew and HLS Starship are on the lunar surface and in-transit to and from. No need for Orion to stay in the “long-term parking lot” out in Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). This will require that more propellant be burned by the Orion ESM to accomplish TEI, but Orion will have all the prop it would have otherwise needed to expend on doing the TLI burn, so it should still have decent reserves even after TEI rather than near-empty ESM tanks.
It’s also worth pointing out that this new mission profile allows Orion to fly with much better life support margins than the previous notional mission profile. With the entire crew aboard the HLS Starship for the journey from LEO to LLO, Orion will not consume any life support resources on that leg of the trip. That leaves better reserves for the one or two crew left in LLO to babysit Orion and for the entire crew on the return leg from LLO to Earth.
As to implications for the rest of the Artemis architecture, one significant variable is whether or not Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 lander (BM Mk2) could also execute a TLI burn and still have sufficient prop remaining to handle a descent to, and a later ascent from, the lunar surface anent whatever lunar orbit Orion is to be left in. I suspect the answer would be no for the current design. Whether there would now be time to increase the size of the BM MK2 tankage before, say, Artemis 5 and its notional late-2028 departure date is problematical. If that can’t be done, then either Artemis 5, as well as Artemis 4, become SpaceX missions or Artemis 5 is simply flown on the sort of mission profile already planned.
The role of Gateway will, pretty obviously, be eliminated for Artemis missions involving SpaceX’s HLS Starship. The matter of Artemis missions involving Blue Origin’s BM MK2 is still TBD pending further information. But prospects are looking increasing dim for Gateway.
Other constraints include the fact that only six ESMs have been contracted for. One has already been expended on Artemis 1 and a second will also be discarded near the end of the upcoming Artemis 2 mission. A third will be needed for the recently revised LEO-centric Artemis 3 mission. That will leave just three remaining for notional Artemis lunar missions numbered 4 through 6. If Artemis 4 and 5 actually fly in 2028, then the last Orion for which an ESM will be available would fly in 2029. As the ESMs are bartered goods the Europeans provide in return for use of ISS, and with ISS due for de-orbiting perhaps as early as 2030, any further production of ESMs would have to be for cash. I have serious doubts about the political palatability, on this side of the pond at least, of adding a mid-to-high nine-figure plus-up – that goes entirely to Europe – to the cost of Artemis missions that are already north of $4 billion each.
Without an ESM, Orion cannot fly. The highly likely budgetary impossibility of arranging for additional ESMs beyond the already-contracted-for six strongly suggests Orion will have no future beyond Artemis 6. Thus, there seems little point in trying to arrange any post-SLS (Space Launch System) alternative launch vehicle for Orion. The Congress will certainly be fine with authorizing a last SLS stack for Artemis 6.
But both SpaceX and Blue Origin pretty obviously face the task of having to have an SLS-Orion alternative ready to go as early as 2030. SpaceX, I fully expect to have what I have been calling a Dear Moon-class Starship ready by then – if not sooner.
Blue Origin will have to scramble harder. The penalty for tardiness will be the same as meted out to Boeing for its Starliner foibles – Artemis missions numbered 7 and beyond that might have been Blue’s will go to SpaceX instead until Blue has something flyable in-hand.
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “What ShadowCam’s images suggest is that if there is any water there, it is locked up in the soil in a way that will require a great deal of processing.”
Processing water out of the soil would likely be less difficult or costly than lifting water from Earth’s surface. On the other hand, if we have to process it out of the soil, then there probably is not much of it in the soil, and we will end up lifting a lot of it from Earth anyway.
___________
pawn,
The point of going again is to stay. As Obama said, “Been there, done that,” but that only applies to dropping in for a couple days of picture-taking and souvenir-rock collection. What we didn’t do is use the Moon for its resources.
Your confusion may be because the two competing governments lack the hardware to accomplish their stated goals of staying and building lunar bases. Neither government is dedicated enough to its goal to have made the hardware that is needed in order to stay.
Commercial space, on the other hand, is already planning ahead, and there are companies that are working on surface structures in order to build lunar bases. These could be used by the competitive governments, but I suspect that other commercial space companies are more likely to use these innovations before the governments do.
Commercial companies have a different sense of urgency than governments do, because borrowed money has more value to these companies than it has for government entities. Commercial companies have to make money from the borrowed money soon enough, fast enough, and plenty enough to pay back the loan in a timely manner, so their urgency is greater than for governments. Governments have a more ‘lazy-fare’ sense of urgency, because they can always tax, borrow, or print more money to cover the interest on the loans that were used for their slow path to completion.