The European Space Agency (ESA) has completed the service module for NASA's Orion spaceship, which is meant to take the nearly cancelled Artemis 4 mission to the moon.
The module, which is supposed to be shipped to NASA this week, was nearly not needed after the Trump administration revealed plans to discontinue Orion and its rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), after the Artemis 3 mission in 2027. Trump's $18.8 billion NASA budget proposal for 2026, introduced in May, proposed sweeping cuts and changes to the agency's current programs. NASA's lunar exploration program was one of around 40 projects selected for funding reduction. The Trump administration signaled that it sought to replace the NASA-made SLS rocket and the Orion spaceship with commercial alternatives after the completion of Artemis 3. It also wanted to eliminate the Lunar Gateway, a station designed to orbit the moon and serve as a base for sorties to the moon’s surface.
