As NASA prepares to send astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than half a century, the agency is revising its long-term plans for Earth’s natural satellite.
Speaking at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on Monday (March 16), NASA Assistant Administrator Amit Kshatriya said that Artemis 2 is still on track for an April 1 launch. If successful, the mission will send astronauts further from Earth than humans have ever traveled before, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
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The approximately 10-day mission will carry Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen on an orbit around the far side of the moon. At closest approach, the moon will appear to them about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. From that vantage point, the astronauts will document various surface features, including regions scientists believe have never been seen by humans.
“We’re telling the crew that their verbal descriptions are actually going to be the monumental scientific data set from this mission,” said Ariel Deutsch, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California and a member of the science team that helps plan Artemis 2 observations. “As people, the crew provides critical perceptual context that just can’t be replicated with robotic sensors.”
The Artemis 2 crew can spend up to six hours conducting observations, using handheld Nikon cameras, recording verbal descriptions and making sketches and notes on tablets. While many lunar targets are large or otherwise easy to identify, scientists are particularly interested in subtle variations in color, light and terrain — features human perception can pick up in ways that instruments alone might miss, Deutsch said.
To guide the effort, NASA has developed an interactive lunar atlas to help the crew track priority targets based on light and viewing conditions during the flyby. The final observing plan will be uploaded after launch, once the spacecraft’s exact trajectory is confirmed, Deutsch said.
The preparations for Artemis 2 have included three years of training rooted in Apollo-era techniques, particularly field geology, along with an intensive “lunar basics” course designed to build the vocabulary and observational skills needed to describe the moon from orbit, said Cindy Evans of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, who directed the geology training program for the crew.
“We practiced a lot on their visual observations and their descriptions,” Evans said, “so they would feel confident talking about the moon and knowing they were talking about critical features that are important to lunar scientists back on the moon. Earth.”
A more flexible way back to the moon
Until recently, Artemis 2 was considered the precursor to a manned lunar landing in 2028. But in late February, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that milestone will shift from Artemis 3, as originally planned, to Artemis 4, which is now positioned to be the first manned lunar landing since the Apollo era.
The final destination remains the moon’s south pole, a region believed to be harbor water ice — a crucial resource for future human exploration — in permanently shadowed craters. But the terrain there is far more challenging than the relatively flat equatorial sites visited during Apollo, with steep slopes, rugged mountains and extreme light conditions.
“The whole point is to get down to the South Pole,” Kshatriya said. “I think we agree, still, hopefully, that’s the right place to go. We’re going to keep our sights set there.”
To make that goal “more achievable,” NASA is opening up the performance specifications for early Artemis landing missions “in as many ways as we can,” Kshatriya said. The changes allow greater flexibility in spacecraft trajectories and mission design, taking into account the capabilities and limitations of current systems, while giving industry partners more freedom to propose faster paths forward, he said.
“But we’re not giving up on the South Pole yet, and I don’t think we will, because I think it’s somewhere we have to go,” Kshatriya said. “We have to challenge ourselves and we have to go somewhere we’ve never been.”
The revised strategy places increased emphasis on robotic precursor missions to lay the foundation for a sustained human presence. NASA envisions one steady cadence of robotic landings near the South Pole – potentially as often as monthly – beginning as early as 2027, to collect data on extreme temperatures, soil properties and communication challenges.
The data will help reduce the risk to future crews and “actually give ourselves a credible chance of collecting a moon base in the right place,” said the Kshatriya.
“We’re not just going to throw down a magical bubble dome that everyone lives in and has plants and wonderful things,” he said. – We know that it is not credible.
The change of strategy comes in the blink of an eye delays to SpaceX’s massive Starship rocketwhose upper stage NASA tapped to be that of the Artemis program first manned lunar lander. Under the original architecture, Artemis 3 depended on the completion of several complex milestones that Starship has yet to demonstrate. These include large-scale transfer and storage of supercooled propellant in space, as well as a dozen refueling flights in Earth orbit before the vehicle can head to the Moon.
NASA has also chosen the Blue Moon lander from Blue originwhich has stopped its suborbital space tourism worked for at least two years to accelerate the development of the lunar lander. NASA plans to test the rendezvous and docking capabilities of Orion with Starship and/or Blue Moon in Earth orbit during Artemis 3, which is now due to launch in 2027
NASA hopes the revised plan will keep it on track for a 2028 lunar landing, while also positioning the agency return astronauts to the moon before China — and before the end of the current US presidential term in January 2029.
Kshatriya said meeting that timeline will require what he described as “a change” in how NASA works with industry.
“It’s going to take NASA people to roll up their sleeves and get side by side with industry to get some of these things done,” he said, “which I think a lot of us want to do anyway, but that’s what it’s going to take.”
“It’s ambitious, but I think we can do it.”
