The long time of Artemis II – space historian explains why it took more than 50 years to return to the Moon.

While visiting the National Air and Space Museum in January 2026, a visitor asked this insightful question: “Why did it take so long to return to the Moon?”

After all, NASA had the knowledge and technology to send humans to the moon more than 50 years ago as part of the Apollo program. And, as one tour guide reminded us, computers today can do more than they could back then, as evidenced by the smartphones most of us carry in our pockets. Shouldn’t it be easier to get to the Moon than before?

The reality is that sending people into space safely continues to be difficult, especially as the mission grows in complexity.

New technologies require years of study, development and testing before they can be certified for flight. And yet, systems and equipment can behave in ways that surprise and trouble engineers and planners; look no further than Boeing’s Starliner CFT mission or Orion’s heat shield operation on Artemis I.

Problems with the Starliner launchers forced NASA to return the spacecraft to the International Space Station without its crew. The unexpected burnout of Orion’s heat shield ended years of research, resulting in NASA changing reentry plans for the Artemis II mission.

NASA programs also require sustained political will and financial support across multiple presidential administrations, Congresses and fiscal years. As a historian of human spaceflight, I have studied the space agency’s public relations efforts to convince the American taxpayer that their programs have value in the public interest.

NASA is on the eve of the first flight to the Moon since the Apollo era: Artemis II. A team of four will pilot the lunar probe, laying the groundwork, a reliable base, for landing on the Artemis IV mission.

The story of NASA’s mission to return humans to the long and salty Moon illustrates the challenges of turning grand ambitions into real missions.

Post-Apollo

In the early 1970s, with two successful moon landings in the books, President Richard Nixon sought to reduce NASA’s budget to better align with his administration’s priorities. This decision put the space agency in a difficult position, which eventually led to the cancellation of three planned Apollo missions to save money for its long-term human mission in low Earth space.

NASA rebuilt the third stage of a Saturn V rocket to create the first US space station, Skylab, which operated from 1973 to 1974. The space station used leftover Saturn IB rockets and Apollo command and service modules to send crews to the station.

Over the next three decades, NASA developed and operated the space shuttle. A group of space orbiters supported the launch of satellites and microgravity research on orbital missions of 17 days. This mission was intended to help long-term human activities and provide benefits to people on Earth. For example, data from protein crystal growth experiments has informed drug development.

The space shuttle program has facilitated the construction, maintenance and operation of an ongoing manned research platform in orbit, the International Space Station. The first modules were launched in late 1998.

Where else to go?

As the new millennium approached, the Clinton administration tasked NASA with thinking beyond the space station. What could robots and humans do next? And where could they do it? In particular, the White House has shown interest in areas beyond the Earth’s orbit.

It turned out that NASA was in a good position to meet the request of the administration. NASA director Daniel Goldin was already thinking about preparing proposals for the next presidential administration and had recently supported the study of the return of the moon. In 1999, he founded a group to investigate new technologies, jobs and places for the 21st century.

This work took on new importance after the tragic loss of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia in February 2003. Many people, including those in the new George W. Bush White House, wondered if the human flight program should continue – and, if so, how.

Administration negotiations culminated in Bush’s Space Exploration Vision in 2004, which ordered NASA to retire the space shuttle after the completion of the space station. It wanted to return humans to the Moon in a crewed probe designed for places beyond low Earth orbit.

It also calls for continued exploration of Mars robots and attracting companies and international partners in space. Fifteen years earlier, President George HW Bush had also announced a program to explore the Moon and Mars, but congressional concerns about costs kept space travelers close to home.

Legacy of the Stars Program

In December 2004, NASA began the process of finding a manufacturer of a crewed probe. In August 2006, the space agency awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to build the capsule, which it named Orion – the same Orion intended to carry Artemis astronauts to the Moon.

Years of research, development and testing followed for Orion as well as the Ares I crew and Ares V cargo launch vehicles. Together, these technologies formed the Constellation program.

The constellation had two main goals: in the near term, to help shuttle crews to and from space after the space shuttle program ends; in the long run, enabling one to explore the moon.

Building systems that could operate around the Earth and around the Moon was supposed to save the time and cost of building two vehicles. Likewise, flexibility can reduce costs.

In the first months of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009, the administration launched an independent review of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. The Augustine Committee, chaired by retired space officer Norman Augustine, found that the organization’s ambitions exceeded its limited budget, which caused major delays. The first Orion spacecraft may have arrived after the space station was decommissioned.

The committee proposed several paths to the current funding situation, which led to the space and space transportation programs. An additional annual investment of US$3 billion will allow exploration outside of low Earth orbit.

In the end, the Obama administration canceled Constellation, but its two technologies continued, thanks to US senators from countries that would have been affected by the reduction.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 funded the continued development of Orion, shifting responsibility for space crew transportation to commercial vehicles. It also directed NASA to develop a space launch system, a replacement for the heavy Ares V, to send Orion to the Moon. The technical policy has had political benefits, too, saving jobs in many congressional districts by providing advancements for aviation contractors.

In December 2014, a heavy-duty Delta IV rocket launched the first Orion capsule on a test flight, providing engineers with information about the spacecraft’s systems and heat shield. In October 2015, the space launch system had completed a critical design review, the final step before production could begin.

Introducing Artemis

In December 2017, the new Trump administration issued a policy directive that changes the focus of NASA’s human flight program to return to the Moon. The space station will use Orion and the space launch system in the race to the arrival date of 2024. NASA officially named the program Artemis in May 2019.

The 25-day Artemis I mission, which launched in November 2022, was a major milestone in the program. This unmanned spacecraft was the first space launch system and the first to combine SLS and Orion. It laid the groundwork for Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS.

For more than 50 years, each new presidential administration has made space exploration one of its top priorities, either encouraging or curtailing NASA’s efforts to return humans to the moon.

Every crewed aircraft requires the preparation of technical expertise, political will and financial support over years if not decades. For space fans planning to watch Artemis II’s launch, the wait to read it may seem like a long time. But it’s just a blip in NASA’s long journey back to the Moon.