NASA reclassified Artemis III on February 27. The mission keeps the name and the crew, runs the lander rendezvous in low Earth orbit, returns home without crossing translunar injection. Artemis IV inherits the surface landing on the 2028 manifest.

Apollo 9 ran the same lunar module checkout in March 1969. Apollo 10 took the LM to lunar orbit in May. Apollo 11 landed in July. Four months between LEO test and lunar surface.

Twelve months sit between the redrawn Artemis III and the launch on the manifest after it. The launch after it does not have two qualified landers parked anywhere. Starship HLS still has its in-orbit refueling cycle to qualify. Blue Moon still needs flight hardware. The phased risk-reduction frame is what NASA writes when the supplier stack is not ready and the calendar still wants a mission to ship.

Isaacman ran Polaris Dawn on a private cycle that flew faster than half the agency programs it overlapped. The NASA he now runs sequences a moon return whose first surface boots land in 2028, fifty-six years after Apollo 17 closed the program that wrote the playbook.