The crew of Artemis II won’t land on the moon however will lay the groundwork for the primary crewed missions to Mars.
Revealed On 23 Sep 2025
NASA could also be headed again to the moon months before initially deliberate, with the company asserting that the primary crewed flight in its Artemis programme might make the journey across the moon and again as early as February.
The house company’s Artemis programme is the flagship effort by america to return people to the moon, a multibillion-dollar sequence of missions that rivals an analogous effort by China, which is aiming for a 2030 astronaut moon touchdown.
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Within the first Artemis mission, an uncrewed spacecraft travelled across the moon and again in November 2022.
The objective of the Artemis II mission, a 10-day flight across the moon and again, is to “discover the Moon for scientific discovery, financial advantages, and to construct the muse for the primary crewed missions to Mars”, in response to NASA.
The crew of Artemis II won’t land on the moon however would be the first to journey past low Earth orbit since 1972, the BBC reported.
The mission was initially deliberate for April, nevertheless it could possibly be moved as much as February.
“We collectively have a entrance row seat to historical past,” Lakiesha Hawkins, NASA’s appearing deputy affiliate administrator, stated in a information convention on Tuesday. “The launch window might open as early because the fifth of February, however we wish to emphasise that security is our prime precedence.”
Artemis II is supposed to be a take a look at for the company’s extra bold mission, Artemis III, at present deliberate for 2027, and can contain a moon lander variant of SpaceX’s Starship rocket. The objective for Artemis III is to land on the moon.
Artemis II includes NASA’s Area Launch System rocket and its Orion capsule. The Orion capsule will trip atop the enormous, 98-metre-tall (322 toes) SLS rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Area Middle in Florida, the primary time the spacecraft duo will fly with people.
NASA’s most well-known lunar tour happened greater than 50 years in the past, when Neil Armstrong turned the primary particular person to set foot on the moon in 1969 whereas appearing because the commander of Apollo 11.