NASA announces its first manned mission to the Moon in 50 years
The launch will take place between February and April 2026, although the agency does not plan to land on the satellite until 2027.
BarcelonaNASA announced Tuesday that it plans to launch its first crewed mission to the Moon in 50 years between February and April 2026. The flight will be a round trip around the satellite, and the North American space agency considers it a safety test, as the objective is to confirm its viability, Lakiesha Hawkins, acting associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said at a press conference. Although the intention is for the mission to take off in February, specifically on February 5, Hawkins admitted that the priority is the crew and assured that the commitment is to do so "no later than April."
Artemis is the United States government's big bet—it's a multi-million dollar program—to reach the Moon before China, which aims to send astronauts by 2030, as a precursor to future missions to explore the planet Mars. Since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, no human has returned to the Moon. After Artemis I, which in 2022 successfully tested NASA's most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System, and the Orion capsule, the spacecraft that will carry the astronauts, around the moon, the US space agency unveiled the second phase of the program (Artemis II) this Tuesday, a team of four scientists.
For ten days, the group of astronauts will orbit the Moon (about 10,000 kilometers) and return to Earth. The spacecraft 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.
