NASA has announced that it aims to launch its next crewed mission around the Moon as early as February, bringing the date forward from its previous target of no later than April.
The ten-day Artemis II mission will mark the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years. Four astronauts — Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will travel beyond low-Earth orbit, though they will not land on the Moon.
The mission’s main objective is to test spacecraft systems ahead of a planned lunar landing in the coming years.
Lakiesha Hawkins, NASA’s acting deputy associate administrator, called the mission “an important moment in the human exploration of space,” telling reporters: “We together have a front row seat to history.” She emphasized that safety remains the agency’s top priority despite the ambitious timeline.
Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said the powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was “pretty much stacked and ready to go,” with work continuing on the Orion crew capsule and final ground tests.
The Artemis I mission, which flew in November 2022, was a 25-day uncrewed test flight that orbited the Moon and successfully returned to Earth, despite minor heatshield issues that have since been resolved.
When Artemis II lifts off from Kennedy Space Center, the SLS will carry Orion into orbit with the help of two solid rocket boosters, which will detach after two minutes. The core stage will separate eight minutes later, allowing Orion’s solar arrays to deploy.
After a 25-hour systems check, Orion will perform a proximity operations demonstration — a controlled manoeuvre to simulate future docking procedures — before the spacecraft’s service module fires its engines to begin a four-day journey toward the Moon.
The crew will travel more than 5,000 nautical miles (9,200 km) beyond the Moon — farther than any humans have ever gone — before slingshotting back to Earth.
During the mission, scientists will study the astronauts’ physical responses to spaceflight by comparing organoid tissue samples taken before and after the journey.
After completing its lunar flyby, Orion will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off California’s coast.
NASA hopes a successful Artemis II mission will pave the way for Artemis III, the programme’s first crewed Moon landing.
However, experts caution that NASA’s target of “no earlier than mid-2027” for Artemis III may be optimistic given delays to SpaceX’s Starship system, which will be required for the lunar landing.
Source: Al Jazeera
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