“On April 3rd, we will announce the crew for the first mission back to the moon in over half a century,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during his annual “State of NASA” address on Thursday (March 9). “Four astronauts, three from America and one from Canada, will fly around the moon.”
NASA is currently targeting November 2024 for the launch of the roughly 10-day mission, known as Artemis 2.Related: NASA’s Artemis Program: Everything You Need to Know
As the name suggests, Artemis 2 is the second mission in NASA’s Artemis program for lunar exploration. It will use the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and Orion capsule, which proved their flight readiness on the Artemis 1 mission late last year.
The 25-day Artemis 1 sent an unmanned Orion into lunar orbit and back. It was the first mission for SLS, the most powerful rocket ever successfully launched, and only the second for Orion, following an unmanned test flight to Earth orbit back in 2014. (The previous Orion mission lifted off on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket.)
If Artemis 2 goes well, NASA will begin focusing on Artemis 3, which will land astronauts near the moon’s south pole in 2025 or so. The Artemis 3 crew will include the first woman and the first person of color to set foot on the moon, NASA officials have said.
We’ll also soon learn more about Artemis 3: On Wednesday (March 15), NASA and Houston-based company Axiom Space will unveil a prototype version of the spacesuit that Artemis 3 astronauts will wear on the lunar surface. Axiom is building these suits for NASA as part of a deal the agency announced last September.
Artemis 3 does not mark the end of the Artemis program. NASA plans to build a manned research post near the moon’s south pole by the end of the 2020s. The lessons and skills learned during this effort will help the agency get astronauts to Mars, which it aims to do in the late 2030s or early 2040s, NASA officials have said .
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the hunt for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). follow us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab)or on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).