Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has finalized assembly and testing of NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission, officially transferring the vehicle to NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) team. This handover marks a major milestone in NASA’s campaign to return humans to the Moon and lay the groundwork for eventual crewed missions to Mars.
Designed for deep space exploration, Orion is NASA’s most advanced human-rated spacecraft. As the program’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin produced the crew module, adaptor, and launch abort system.

Not so fast. This entire system is on the chopping block in the tRump budget proposal. If Congress goes with his plan, STS and Orion would be cancelled after Artemis III, and the lunar orbital space station Gateway would be cancelled immediately. Lunar and Mars programs would then be transferred to “private launch systems.”

Of course that means Musk’s Space X, but Besos’ Blue Origin could get in there too. While those launch systems are vastly cheaper and could mean a more robust launch schedule, neither are close to being ready for prime time. The last two Starship launches failed with the capsule burning up, and all but one have been suborbital. New Glenn has had one launch so far and it successfully reached orbit, but one launch is hardly a proven system.

Imo STS and Orion should remain in service at least until both those private systems have actually made it successully to the moon and back a couple times.

As for Artemis II which is scheduled to launch next year, I had mentioned in another post the DEI crew issues that must be angsting the Idiot-in-Chief (a black guy and a woman). Add to that one of the white guys is a Canadian. If MAGA had there way there would only be one guy on that flight.