>>13624571That would be nice, but the plan is different. No one was really expecting such a lander as Starship and due to the way NASA works, the can't rapidly adapt to it. They're still sending only four people per mission, in this case Orion and somewhat Gateway are bottlenecks here. A bit ironic considering they're a foundation of Artemis program.
Anyway, as I read, during the first mission they'll be doing science, various research and experiments. I'm not sure about the rover, Wikipedia says it'll be sent before Artemis 3, but its source, arstechnica says it'll be sent not earlier than 2026, and that'll be probably for Artemis 4. Theoretically, rover could become a part of basic equipment of every HLS Starship, that would be nice and cheap way to send vehicles.
What's curious is when, not if, SLS will stop being the only vehicle sending people to the Moon. That's simply inevitable, even normies will notice that such a tiny capsule as Orion is sending only 2 people to such a huge lander as Starship. It's even bigger than Gateway, it's going to look ridiculous. People will start asking questions and it'll be uncomfortable for NASA.
