NASA plans to send manned Moon mission by February 2026

The crew of Artemis II will not land on the moon but will lay the groundwork for the first crewed missions to Mars.

NASA may be headed back to the moon months sooner than originally planned, with the agency announcing that the first crewed flight in its Artemis programme could make the trip around the moon and back as early as February.

The space agency’s Artemis programme is the flagship effort by the United States to return humans to the moon, a multibillion-dollar series of missions that rivals a similar effort by China, which is aiming for a 2030 astronaut moon landing.

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In the first Artemis mission, an uncrewed spacecraft travelled around the moon and back in November 2022.

The goal of the Artemis II mission, a 10-day flight around the moon and back, is to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”, according to NASA.

The crew of Artemis II will not land on the moon but will be the first to travel beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, the BBC reported.

The mission was originally planned for April, but it could be moved up to February.

“We together have a front row seat to history,” Lakiesha Hawkins, NASA’s acting deputy associate administrator, said in a news conference on Tuesday. “The launch window could open as early as the fifth of February, but we want to emphasise that safety is our top priority.”

Artemis II is meant to be a test for the agency’s more ambitious mission, Artemis III, currently planned for 2027, and will involve a moon lander variant of SpaceX’s Starship rocket. The goal for Artemis III is to land on the moon.

Artemis II involves NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and its Orion capsule. The Orion capsule will ride atop the giant, 98-metre-tall (322 feet) SLS rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first time the spacecraft duo will fly with humans.

NASA’s most famous lunar excursion took place more than 50 years ago, when Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon in 1969 while acting as the commander of Apollo 11.