NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced major changes Friday to the space program's Artemis moon project, which is designed to add missions and increase the pace of launches ahead of a planned lunar landing attempt in 2028.

The changes come as NASA hopes to launch astronauts on a 10-day mission around the moon in April as part of its Artemis II mission, which has experienced a handful of setbacks recently. 

The biggest change is adding another Artemis mission between Artemis II and the lunar landing attempt in 2028. Isaacman said instead that Artemis III will conduct key technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit in 2027, and Artemis IV will attempt the landing in 2028.

“Everybody agrees this is the only way forward,” Isaacman said in a news briefing. “And I’ll say, I had similar conversations with all our stakeholders in Congress, and they’re fully behind NASA in this approach. I know this is how NASA changed the world, and this is how NASA is going to do it again.”

Isaacman said the change comes after realizing the gap between the flight around the moon in Artemis II and the moon landing in 2028 was too big, because Space Launch System rockets and Orion spacecraft launch once every three years.

“Launching a rocket is important, and as complex as SLS is, every three years is not a path to success,” he said. “A component of that is, when you are launching every three years, your skills atrophy, you lose muscle memory.”

Isaacman also said NASA will standardize the manufacturing process for the SLS rocket and aim to launch the rockets more frequently by launching them roughly every 10 months.