NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced significant changes to the agency's Artemis program, which aims to land on the moon in 2028.

The Artemis 2 mission, currently scheduled for launch in April, is the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket. NASA’s original plan was to follow that up with a crewed landing on the surface of the Moon as part of the Artemis 3 mission.

NASA sent the Artemis II rocket back from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-B to the Vehicle Assembly Building to fix a problem in the rocket’s upper stage.

The shake-up in the flight lineup and push for a faster pace came just two days after NASA’s new moon rocket returned to its hangar for more repairs and a safety panel warned the space agency to scale back its overly ambitious goals for humanity’s first lunar landing in more than half a century.

The Orion capsule's heat shield had issues during the uncrewed Artemis 1 moon mission in late 2022. Here are the steps NASA has taken to prevent them from recurring on Artemis 2.