NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission to the Moon is getting ready to make history. It will be the first crewed flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion deep space capsule. The mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than 6 March 2024. It will be roughly ten days in duration and is a major milestone on the path to human exploration beyond the Moon.
With the Artemis II mission, we are at an exciting and historic time, and a critical juncture in space exploration. It aims to take astronauts farther into deep space than any human has traveled before. The mission will involve four accomplished astronauts: Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman. They will be starting out on an ambitious and exciting journey. This mission paves the way for a future human landing on the lunar surface, an achievement we have not seen since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s.
After a successful career as a fighter pilot, Jeremy Hansen became a member of the Canadian Space Agency in 2009. His deep experience will be an enormous asset toward advancing the mission’s ambitious objectives. Victor Glover, selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013, is the first astronaut with experience in the Crew-1 crew. Christina Koch, who spent part of her youth in Michigan and became an astronaut in 2013, had a record-breaking spaceflight in 2019. Completing this diverse and talented group is Reid Wiseman, 27-year U.S. Navy veteran and former naval aviator.
Throughout the mission, the astronauts will be living in about nine square meters of space. They will be temporarily living in zero environment aboard the Orion crew module. Promptly at launch, they will extend up and out in two parallel rows of two, with their undersides to the earth. This unique positioning is intentional—not just for safety’s sake, but to provide efficient operational conduct during ascent.
The overall goal of Artemis II is to test Orion’s flight capabilities, but to continue preparing for down-the-road crewed lunar landings. The astronauts will manually pilot the capsule in Earth orbit, practicing the steering and alignment they’ll use in future missions. After this initial phase, they will fly tens of thousands of kilometers past the Moon. Their mission is to test Orion’s life-support, propulsion, power, and navigation systems.
NASA recently announced a series of launch windows for Artemis II. There are four slots available in early March, then five additional slots available the first week of April. The agency looks forward to achieving this mission as a foundation for long-term, sustainable lunar exploration. Mainly though, it will lay the groundwork for future human missions to Mars.