Washington, United States. NASA is preparing to launch its second Artemis mission, sending astronauts toward the moon for the first time in more than 53 years as the United States seeks to reassert leadership in space amid competition from China.
Mission plan and crew
Three U.S. and one Canadian astronaut are due for liftoff aboard NASA’s Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket on Wednesday for a 10-day test mission that will swing around the moon and return to Earth. NASA said the flight will take the crew deeper into space than humans have ever gone before.
The crew includes NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is set to become the first Canadian to reach the lunar vicinity.
Artemis program objectives and timeline
The mission is the first crewed test flight in NASA’s Artemis program, the flagship U.S. effort to begin regular flights to the moon, at an estimated cost of at least $93 billion since 2012. Not since Apollo 17 in 1972 have humans touched down on the moon, a feat NASA aims to repeat in 2028 at the lunar south pole.
Competition and broader lunar goals
The United States is the only country to have put humans on another celestial body, through six Apollo lunar landings driven by competition with the former Soviet Union. U.S. officials have more recently focused on China, which has carried out a series of robotic lunar landings and has a stated goal of putting a crew on the lunar surface by 2030.
NASA has said that, through a series of increasingly advanced Artemis missions extending into the next decade, the United States aims to set precedent for how others will operate and coexist on the moon’s surface, where countries and companies could someday exploit lunar resources and prepare for missions to Mars.
Scientific rationale
Koch said on Sunday that the moon is a “witness plate” to the solar system’s formation and a stepping stone to Mars, “where we might have the most likelihood of finding evidence of past life.” She said many countries see value in exploring the solar system and described a key question as “are we alone?”
“Answering that question starts at the moon,” she said, adding, “The question is not should we go, but should we lead, or should we follow?”
What do you think Artemis II will mean for future lunar exploration and international competition in space?