NASA announces its first manned mission to the Moon in fifty years

BarcelonaNASA announced Tuesday that it plans to launch its first crewed mission to the Moon in fifty years between February and April 2026. The flight will be a round trip around the satellite, and the US space agency views it as a safety and endurance test, as the goal is to confirm its viability, explained Lakiesha Hawkins, acting associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, in a press conference.

Although the intention is for the mission to take off in February, specifically on February 5, Hawkins admitted that the commitment is to do so "no later than April." "Our job is not only to launch this crew, but to make sure our friends get back home safely," she stressed. In addition, the launch date depends on other factors such as the position of the Moon relative to Earth, technical readiness, and even the weather on Earth and in space.

Artemis is the United States government's big bet – it's a multi-million dollar program – to overtake China in the "second space race" to reach the Moon, a country that aspires to send astronauts by 2030. The ultimate goal is to take a previous step to establish themselves on the satellite and land the planet. Since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, no human has returned to the Moon.

After Artemis I, which in 2022 managed to test NASA's most powerful rocket – the Space Launch System – and the Orion capsule – the ship where the astronauts will travel – around the moon for 25 days, this Tuesday the North American space agency placed a team of four scientists in orbit around the satellite: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The goal is to verify that the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket systems operate in deep space as designed on Earth.

Experiments once they return

Once in space, astronauts will conduct several experiments to study the effects of space travel on human health. One of these experiments is known as Avatar (Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response), which consists of a USB-stick-sized chip containing cells grown from the blood of astronauts on the mission. It will analyze the impact of increased radiation and micro-organisms.

Another experiment will monitor the astronauts' sleep, physical activity, and interactions on board the capsule, like wristbands. fitness to study changes in their health in real time. In addition, the crew will collect saliva samples, which will be analyzed upon return to Earth and compared with those taken before their departure.

For ten days, the group of astronauts will orbit the Moon (about 10,000 kilometers) and return to Earth. The craft will take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and on the way back, it will land in the eastern Pacific, near the coast of San Diego. "Everything we learn from Artemis II will inform Artemis III," Hawkins said. Artemis II was originally scheduled to launch between November 2024 and September 2025, but a problem with the heat shield on the Orion during the Artemis I mission delayed plans.