Humanity is headed back to the Moon.
The Artemis mission, scheduled to launch on Wednesday, will be the first time people have been to the Moon since 1972, in the last of the Apollo missions.
This time around, the astronauts will not stop off on the lunar surface. Instead, they will take a 10-day journey, fly around the far side of the Moon, and come back again.
But Nasa hopes that trip is the beginning of a plan to return to the Moon that it hopes will eventually lead to lunar bases and visits to Mars.
This Artemis mission is a practice trip for those more ambitious journeys. The upcoming test flight by Artemis astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen is the first step in settling the moon this time around.
The moon is about to welcome its first woman, first person of color and first non-American.
Koch already holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. During her 328-day mission at the International Space Station spanning 2019 and 2020, she took part in the first all-female spacewalk.
Glover, a Navy test pilot, was the first Black astronaut to live and work aboard the space station in 2020 and 2021. He also was one of the first astronauts to launch with SpaceX.
The Canadian Space Agency’s Hansen, a former fighter pilot, is the lone space rookie. Their commander is Wiseman, a retired Navy captain who lived aboard the space station in 2014 and later headed Nasa’s astronaut corps. They range in age from 47 to 50.
Nasa’s new Space Launch System rocket stands 322 feet (98 meters), shorter than the Apollo program’s Saturn V rocket but more powerful at liftoff thanks to a pair of strap-on boosters. Atop the rocket is the Orion capsule carrying the astronauts.
Made of salvaged space shuttle engines and other parts, the SLS uses the same fuel — liquid hydrogen — as the shuttles did. Hydrogen leaks repeatedly grounded the shuttles as well as the first SLS rocket test without astronauts aboard in 2022. More than three years later, Artemis II suffered the same hydrogen leaks during a February fueling practice run, missing the first launch window. A repeat of helium-flow issues bumped the mission into April.
After liftoff, the astronauts will spend the first 25 hours circling Earth in a high, lopsided orbit. They’ll use the separated upper stage as a target, steering their Orion capsule around it as docking practice for future moonshots. Instead of fancy range finders, they’ll rely on their eyes to judge the gap, venturing no closer than 33 feet (10 meters) to the stage.
If all goes as planned, Orion’s main engine will hurl the crew to the moon some 244,000 miles (393,000 kilometers) away. This free-return trajectory made famous in Apollo 13 relies on the moon and Earth’s gravity, minimizing the need for fuel.
On flight day six, Orion will reach its farthermost point from Earth as it sails 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) beyond the moon. That will surpass Apollo 13’s distance record, making Artemis astronauts the most remote travelers. After emerging from behind the moon, the crew will head straight home with a splashdown on flight day 10 — nine days, one hour and 46 minutes after liftoff.
The Artemis II crew may behold never-before-seen regions of the lunar far side — with the moon appearing the size of a basketball at arm’s length during the closest part of the roughly six-hour flyby. They’ve been poring over maps and satellite images of the lunar far side and anticipate a photo frenzy. Their lunar mentor is Nasa geologist Kelsey Young, who will monitor the flyby from Mission Control in Houston.
“The moon is like such a unifying thing,” she said. “What we’re doing with this mission is going to bring that a little closer to everybody around the world.”
Besides professional cameras, they’ll carry the latest smartphones. NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman added smartphones to the mission for “inspiring” picture-taking.
While Nasa and private companies have focused over the years on reaching the moon’s near side — the side that constantly faces Earth — only China has planted landers on the far side. That makes the astronauts’ observations of the lunar far side all the more valuable for Nasa.
Like Apollo, the Artemis mission ends with a splashdown homecoming into the Pacific.
All eyes will be on Orion’s heat shield as the capsule plunges through the atmosphere. It’s the part of the spacecraft that took the biggest beating during 2022’s test flight, with charred chunks gouged out. The heat shield is being retooled for future capsules but remains the original design for Artemis II.
Nasa is limiting the heat exposure during reentry by shortening the capsule’s atmospheric descent. Navy recovery ships will be stationed off the coast of San Diego as Orion parachutes into the ocean.
Additional reporting by agencies
