It was the first manned mission to land on the moon in nearly 50 years Scheduled for 2025and the first manned moon landing since the Apollo missions in 1972. NASA has pledged to return humans to the lunar surface — a bold plan born during the Trump administration and embraced by the Biden White House.
when affected Some setbacks and delays, the program was the first human deep space exploration program since Apollo to survive with successive administrations. But unlike Apollo, Artemis is designed to create a permanent presence on and around the moon. Since China also aims to send astronauts to the Moon, NASA has moved forward with a sense of urgency.
In a briefing Friday, NASA officials said they chose the landing sites using data from other lunar probes and data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, an automated spacecraft that maps the surface of the moon.
“By choosing these regions, we are taking a giant leap toward returning humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo,” Mark Krasich, NASA associate deputy administrator for the Artemis campaign development division, said in a statement. “When we do that, it will be unlike any mission to come before, as astronauts enter dark areas previously undiscovered by humans and lay the foundation for a long-term stay in the future.”
NASA has already announced that it will go Return to the lunar south pole. But specific locations were chosen six degrees from the South Pole because they provide safe landing sites near permanently shaded areas, allowing crews to land on the lunar surface there. Six and a half days in the moon.
It would allow astronauts to “collect samples and conduct scientific analyzes in a relentless region, providing critical information about the depth, distribution and composition of confirmed water ice at the Moon’s south pole,” NASA said.
Water is essential to sustaining human life, but its components — hydrogen and oxygen — can be used to propel rockets.
The Apollo missions visited the tropics on the moon, where there is long daylight — up to two weeks at a time. In contrast, Antarctica may only have light for a few days, making missions more difficult and limited when NASA can take off.
“It’s very far from the Apollo sites,” said Sarah Noble, lunar sciences leader at Artemis Lunar. “Now we’re going to a completely different place.”
The announcement comes as NASA is now preparing for its first Artemis mission Scheduled to be held on August 29. The flight, known as Artemis I, will be the first launch of NASA’s largest rocket of the Space Launch System, which will send the Orion crew capsule, without any astronauts, into lunar orbit for a 42-day mission.
Earlier this week, the space agency rotated the rocket and spacecraft Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center In Florida, officials say everything is on track for a two-hour launch window that opens at 8:33 a.m. NASA has set backup launch dates on September 2 and 5 in case of delays.
One of the primary goals of the flight is to test Orion’s heat shield, said Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis mission manager. The heat shield is intended to protect Orion and any future crew from the extreme temperatures it will encounter when it enters Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 miles per hour, or Mach 32.
The mission will follow a flight with four astronauts to orbit the moon in 2024, but not land. The first human landing since the Apollo missions in 1972 was initially scheduled for 2025.
That task depends on many factors, including development Starship SpaceX rocket and the spacecraft, which will rendezvous with Orion in lunar orbit and then carry astronauts off the lunar surface.
“It feels like we’re on a rollercoaster, about to cross the top of a huge mountain,” Jacob Blecher, NASA’s chief researcher, told reporters Friday.