NASA is targeting 2026 for Artemis III, the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, with SpaceX and Blue Origin now competing to deliver astronauts to the Moon's surface aboard rival lander designs.
Artemis III Lands on the 2026 Mission Docket After Artemis II Splashdown
With the Artemis II crew safely back on Earth following their crewed flyby of the Moon, NASA wasted little time shifting its focus to the next step. Artemis III has been formally added to the agency's near-term schedule, targeting a launch window next year. The mission profile goes significantly further than Artemis II — this time, astronauts will not simply loop around the Moon and return. They will attempt an actual landing, touching down near the lunar south pole in a region scientists believe harbors water ice in permanently shadowed craters.
The south pole target is no accident. Water ice can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen — rocket propellant — making it a strategic resource for any long-term lunar presence. Every Artemis landing is, in part, a reconnaissance mission for the infrastructure NASA hopes to eventually build there.
Before any of that can happen, the Artemis III crew — whose names have not yet been announced — will first practice a critical maneuver in lunar orbit. According to the Associated Press, the astronauts will use their Orion capsule to rehearse docking procedures, an essential skill that connects the deep-space transport NASA has spent decades developing to whatever Human Landing System ultimately carries them to the surface.
SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin Blue Moon: Two Very Different Landers
The lander competition is one of the more unusual dynamics in the Artemis program. NASA selected SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System variant as the baseline vehicle for Artemis III, a contract awarded in 2021 that drew protests from Blue Origin before the Government Accountability Office ultimately sided with NASA. Blue Origin did not disappear from the picture, however. The company later won a separate contract for a crewed lunar lander — its Blue Moon vehicle — to support subsequent Artemis missions, effectively creating a two-provider architecture that mirrors how NASA handles commercial cargo and crew transport to the International Space Station.
The two vehicles could hardly be more different in philosophy. SpaceX's Starship is enormous — the tallest rocket ever flown — and requires on-orbit propellant transfer before it can execute a lunar landing. That means a series of tanker launches must precede any crewed mission. Blue Origin's Blue Moon is a more purpose-built lander, designed from the start for the cislunar environment without the same refueling complexity. Neither approach is without risk, and neither vehicle has yet demonstrated all the capabilities NASA requires for a human landing.
For Artemis III specifically, Starship remains the assigned lander, which means SpaceX's progress on propellant transfer demonstrations and high-altitude landing tests will directly influence whether the 2026 window holds. The company has been conducting integrated flight tests of its full Starship stack from Boca Chica, Texas, with each test yielding new data on reentry, vehicle recovery, and system performance.
What the Orion Docking Rehearsal Means for Mission Architecture
The docking practice flagged in the Artemis III mission profile is more than a procedural checkbox. It reflects the fundamental structure of how NASA plans to get astronauts onto the lunar surface and, critically, back off of it.
The architecture works roughly like the Apollo lunar orbit rendezvous concept, updated for the modern era. The Orion capsule, launched aboard the Space Launch System rocket, carries the crew to lunar orbit. From there, a subset of the crew transfers to the waiting lander — in this case, a Starship variant that will have already traveled to lunar orbit independently. After surface operations are complete, the ascent portion of the lander lifts the crew back to orbit, where they must successfully dock with Orion again before the long journey home. A failed docking at that stage would be catastrophic. Practicing the maneuver on the outbound leg, when the stakes are lower, is sound operational logic.
NASA used a similar rehearsal philosophy during Apollo. The program built in incremental complexity across missions, each one stress-testing a component of the full landing architecture before committing to the attempt. Artemis II itself was that kind of step — putting humans inside Orion, sending them around the Moon, and validating life support, navigation, and reentry systems before adding the landing variable.
The Long Shadow of Artemis II and Lessons Carried Forward
The Artemis II mission served as proof that the core transportation stack — Orion riding atop SLS — works with people aboard. That was not a given. SLS flew its uncrewed debut on Artemis I in late 2022, and while that mission validated the vehicle's performance, flying humans introduces a different category of scrutiny. Every system that could be tested without crew was tested on Artemis I. Artemis II answered the question of whether Orion could keep people alive and functional in deep space, beyond the protective bubble of low Earth orbit's magnetic shielding.
The answers were affirmative enough to proceed. But the data gathered will continue feeding into Artemis III preparations, particularly around life support margins and the crew's physiological response to the deep-space radiation environment. South pole landing sites also present their own lighting and terrain challenges — the same geometry that keeps those craters permanently shadowed means the surrounding terrain operates under long periods of low-angle sunlight, creating stark shadows and uneven illumination that complicate both navigation and surface operations.
What Comes Next for NASA's Lunar Program and the Road to Artemis IV
Beyond Artemis III, the program's ambition scales up considerably. Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander enters the picture for later missions, and NASA has outlined plans for the Gateway lunar space station — a small outpost in a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon — to serve as a staging point for surface expeditions. Gateway is being developed with international partners including the European Space Agency, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, among others. Its first elements are expected to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
The pace of all this depends on factors that have historically caused Artemis to slip — budget negotiations in Congress, hardware development timelines, and the sheer technical difficulty of doing something that has not been done in more than five decades. When Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface in December 1972, no one expected the gap before the next human bootprint to last this long.
Whether 2026 holds for Artemis III remains to be seen. What is clear is that NASA, for the first time in a generation, has the crew vehicles, the lander contracts, and the mission architecture in place to close that gap — and two competing commercial partners with strong financial incentives to make sure the hardware is ready when the launch window opens.
