Am I the only one that is totally NOT surprised about this announcement? To me, the whole schedule for Artemis launches was way too optimistic from the get-go. And, like most NASA projects, slippage in the schedule is pretty much the norm. What I find most frustrating is that the problem is not with the launch rocket, which seems to be working well, but with the Orion space capsule. NASA and its contractors had pretty well worked out the design kinks of a space capsule over 50 years ago, and Orion is basically a scaled-up Apollo capsule to carry more people.
For those of you that heap praise on Elon Musk and SpaceX, and I agree they have made huge strides in the Starship program, they face the same challenges as Orion at this point. So far, no Starship has launched so much as a few lab rats or monkeys to demonstrate their environmental support systems (if they even exist at this point) are functional. I suspect they are not. Starship has come a long way, but surviving reentry from an earth orbit is totally different than surviving the fiery inferno of a return from the moon at seven miles per second. Both programs (Artemis and Starship) still have a long way to go.