NASA Delays Lunar Mission Artemis I Launching

The leading NASA plans to launch its first unmanned moon mission, Artemis 1, in February 2022, media agencies reported on Sunday.

COVID-19's economic aftermath and the high increase in the mission's budget drove the agency to delay the launching of its first exploratory mission to the moon.

Before issuing its latest decision of delaying the mission, Nasa completed the installation of the Orion spacecraft on the Space Launch System as a sign for sending the probe to the moon which was later removed.

The agency told reporters: "Completing stacking is a really important milestone. It shows that we’re in the home stretch towards the mission,” Mike Sarafin, Artemis 1 mission manager at NASA Headquarters.

He added: “We’re looking at a period of time within February” for the launching, saying: “We’re very excited. We think this is really tremendous progress.”

Reporters highlighted that February 12 is the closest date for launching the first phase of the mission, in addition, NASA started to continue its studies to recollect the date of launch.

“We really want to see the results of that test, see how we’re doing, see if there’s anything we need to do before we get ready to launch,” Sarafin said.