NASA pushes back astronaut flights to moon again
Cape Canaveral (AP): NASA announced more delays Thursday in sending astronauts back to the moon more than 50 years after Apollo.
Administrator Bill Nelson said the next mission in the Artemis program -- flying four astronauts around the moon and back – is now targeted for April 2026. It had been on the books for September 2025, after slipping from this year.
The investigation into heat shield damage from the capsule's initial test flight two years ago took time, officials said, and other spacecraft improvements are still needed.
This bumps the third Artemis mission — a moon landing by two other astronauts — to at least 2027. NASA had been aiming for 2026.
NASA's Artemis program, a follow-up to the Apollo moonshots of the late 1960s and early 1970s, has completed only one mission. An empty Orion capsule circled the moon in 2022 after blasting off on NASA's new Space Launch System rocket.
Although the launch and lunar laps went well, the capsule returned with an excessively charred and eroded bottom heat shield, damaged from the heat of reentry. It took until recently for engineers to pinpoint the cause and come up with a plan.
NASA will use the Orion capsule with its original heat shield for the next flight with four astronauts, according to Nelson, but make changes to the reentry path at flight's end. To rip off and replace the heat shield would have meant at least a full year's delay and stalled the moon landing even further, officials said.
During the flight test, NASA had the capsule dip in and out of the atmosphere during reentry, and gases built up in the heat shield's outer layer, officials said. That resulted in cracking and uneven shedding of the outer material.
The commander of the lunar fly-around, astronaut Reid Wiseman, took part in Thursday's news conference at NASA headquarters in Washington. His crew includes NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“Delays are agonizing and slowing down is agonizing and it's not what we like to do,” Wiseman said. But he said he and his crew wanted the heat shield damage from the first flight to be fully understood, regardless of how long it took. Now they can focus with this “large decision behind us."
Twenty-four astronauts flew to the moon during NASA's vaulted Apollo program, with 12 landing on it. The final bootprints in the lunar dust were made during Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Nelson said the revised schedule should still have the United States getting astronauts back on the lunar surface before China, which has indicated 2030 for a crew moon landing.
The space agency has put all the Artemis contractors, including Elon Musk's SpaceX, on notice to “double-down” to meet the schedule deadlines, according to Nelson. SpaceX's mega rocket Starship — making test flights from Texas with increasing frequency — is how astronauts will get from the Orion capsule in lunar orbit down to the surface on the first two Artemis moon landings.
Nelson said he's already called Jared Isaacman, the SpaceX-flying billionaire nominated this week by Trump to lead NASA, and invited him to NASA headquarters in Washington.
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Karnataka govt tables Rs 14,767 cr supplementary estimates in assembly
Bengaluru (PTI): The Karnataka government on Monday tabled the supplementary estimates in the assembly, totalling Rs 14,767 crore of additional expenditure for the current fiscal.
Tabled by Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda on behalf of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, supplementary estimates are additional expenditures incurred by the government over and above the budget provisions.
In the fiscal ending March, additional expenditures include Rs 147 crore on the Sadhana Samavesha to mark two years of the Congress government and Rs 223 crore for railway barricading to prevent human-elephant conflict.
As per the supplementary estimates, the government spent Rs 1.25 crore to purchase a Volvo XC90 for former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda.
It also includes -- Rs 1,025 crore to clear various irrigation works bills, Rs 15 crore for helicopter and air travels by Governor, CM, ministers and other VIPs, Rs 110 crore towards scholarship and tuition fee reimbursement for minority students, Rs 15 crore for development of various temples, maths and trusts.
The government also spent Rs 1.4 crore to print a book comprising 'selected' speeches of Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot, Rs 50 lakh to clear pending electricity and water bills of ministers' residences, Rs 10 crore towards rehabilitation of families affected by landslides at Meppadi in Wayanad, Kerala.
Rs 5 crore each for Brahmin Development Board and Arya-Vysya Development Corporation, Rs 60 lakh to Supreme Court senior advocate Kapil Sibal for two appearances representing the government, Rs 5.13 crore towards bills from the Belagavi winter session of the legislature, Rs 5.5 crore towards pending bills from the 2019 and 2021 Assembly bypolls and the upcoming Davangere South and Bagalkot bypolls, are among the expenditures incurred.
