Artemis II mission was a triumph - now comes the hard part

This time, Nasa's stated ambition is different. Administrator Jared Isaacman has set out plans for one crewed lunar landing per year, beginning in 2028, with the fifth Artemis mission - planned for later that same year - marking the start of what the agency calls its Moon base. ESA/P. CarrilConcept artwork showing how Nasa plans to build a lunar base with its international partnersIt sounds like science fiction, but here are the words of a serious space player dealing in science fact: "The Moon economy will develop," Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), tells me."It will take time to set up the various elements, but it will develop."But as the commander of Apollo 13 famously said when his spacecraft malfunctioned on the way to the Moon: "Houston, we've had a problem..."The lander problemTo get boots on the lunar surface, Nasa needs a lander. The US space agency has contracted two private companies to build them: Elon Musk's SpaceX, whose lunar version of its Starship rocket will stand 35 metres tall, and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, whose Blue Moon Mark 2 craft is more compact but just as ambitious.Both are well behind schedule.Keeping super-cold liquid oxygen and methane stable in the vacuum of space, then transferring them between spacecraft, is one of the most demanding engineering challenges in the programme."From a physics point of view it makes sense," says Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist from the Open University. But he points out that the launch of Artemis II was delayed twice this year, before it eventually took off because of fuelling issues."If it's difficult to do in the launch pad, it's going to be much more difficult to do in orbit," he says.The next Artemis mission - Artemis III - is designed to test how the Orion crew capsule docks in Earth orbit with one or both landers. It is scheduled for mid-2027. Given that Starship has not yet completed a successful orbital flight and Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has managed just two launches, this target looks, as Barber puts it, "a very steep ask".The new space raceNasa has kept its 2028 target for a first Artemis Moon landing in part for political reasons - it now aligns with President Trump's renewed space policy, which calls for Americans to be back on the lunar surface by 2028 – a deadline that falls within his current term of office, due to end that year.Independent analysts don't believe the target is realistic. But Congress has backed the date with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, partly because there is a new competitor on the horizon.VCG / China Manned Space AgencyA test flight of China's Long March 10 rocket, the vehicle designed to carry Chinese astronauts to the Moon