NASA has scrubbed its plans to land on the moon in 2027 amid a series of struggles to launch the Artemis II spacecraft this month. 

Space agency administrator Jared Isaacman revealed on Friday that Artemis III, which had been scheduled to touch down on the lunar surface next year, will now only circle the moon - pushing a potential landing mission to 2028 at the earliest.

Meanwhile, its predecessor, Artemis II, initially scheduled to take off on February 8, continues to experience fueling issues that have pushed back its ten-day trek to orbit the moon to April.

The scheduling shakeup comes as NASA critics and conspiracy theorists claim the space agency has been delaying the much-anticipated moon missions to hide the presence of ancient structures previously found on the moon's dark side.

The US government has maintained that no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has ever been found, and the presence of an unknown civilization on the moon has not been proven.

However, multiple authors, scientists and UFO researchers have claimed without evidence that NASA has concealed astronaut reports of buildings located on the side of the moon facing away from Earth, which could be tens of thousands of years old.

Officially, Isaacman said the reason for the cancelled moon landing was to help NASA standardize the equipment and systems used in these launches so the agency could conduct more missions more quickly in the future.

Once Artemis II completes its mission this year, Isaacman revealed that Artemis III will now conduct a similar flight in 2027, and the newly added Artemis IV mission will have the honor of landing on the moon approximately ten months later, in 2028.

In a video released by Isaacman, the space agency chief said: 'NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the President’s national space policy.'

'With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives,' he continued.

'Standardizing vehicle configuration, increasing flight rate and progressing through objectives in a logical, phased approach, is how we achieved the near-impossible in 1969 and it is how we will do it again.'

The newly appointed administrator added that the NASA team believed there were too many development and production risks at the moment to make a moon landing and safe return in 2027 possible.

With that in mind, Isaacman said the agency was going back 'to the wisdom of the folks that designed Apollo.'

'The entire sequence of Artemis flights needs to represent a step-by-step build-up of capability, with each step bringing us closer to our ability to perform the landing missions.'

However, a wide variety of skeptics have alleged that the string of delays is either proof that the original moon missions 50 years ago were fabricated or that astronauts surveying the lunar surface found an advanced city there.

One military whistleblower, US Air Force Sergeant Karl Wolfe, claimed that he had seen pre-Apollo lunar orbiter photos of a city on the dark side of the moon while at a government facility in 1965.

This allegation of Wolf was later echoed by former CIA psychics and respected astronauts who have also claimed there is something on the lunar surface that NASA officials have been keeping hidden since moon missions ended in 1972.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the CIA conducted experiments with individuals who claimed they could perceive information about distant objects, events, or people, a process known as 'remote viewing.'

One of the most famed remote viewers, Ingo Swann, wrote that he allegedly saw towers, buildings and human-like aliens working at a secret complex on the dark side of the moon during one of his psychic episodes in 1975.

Last year, author and geologist Gregg Braden told podcast host Joe Rogan that evidence of this ancient city was kept from the public by the US and Russia during the Cold War.

According to the scientist, who has previously written about the possibility of life on the moon, astronauts landing on the moon in 2028 will discover archeological structures covered in languages that humans will be able to recognize.

'The evidence suggests they're from us, from a time in our past, a cycle of civilization where we did great and beautiful things by working together until we destroyed one another through war, and that we're repeating that cycle,' Braden claimed.

Braden has previously stated in books like Deep Truth and Gaia TV’s Missing Links that humans on the moon came from a long-lost Earth civilization 50,000 years ago, which developed space-faring technology before destroying itself in an ancient war.

'NASA's been "Going back to the moon this year!!" since 1988 (about 40 years!), and yet we haven't. Ask yourself why,' one skeptic posted on social media Friday.

The Trump Administration has continued to stand by its goal of returning a US presence to the moon - this time permanently.

Former NASA administrator Sean Duffy declared in September that the White House intended to 'land and establish a long-term presence of life on the moon led by America.'

Duffy continued by saying that what astronauts learn from the Artemis missions will help in future efforts to 'put American boots on Mars.'

Isaacman noted that a second moon landing, Artemis V, could take place later on in 2028 if the first mission to the lunar surface is successful.