ARTEMIS II: RETURN TO THE MOON
NASA PREPARES FOR NEXT STEP IN MOON RETURN PROGRAM
By Nicholas Tran | Staff Writer
On Nov. 16, 2022, for the first time in 50 years, a human-designed spacecraft, Artemis I, orbited the Moon. Now, three-and-a-half years later, the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) prepares to take a big leap forward in the program by sending the Artemis II spacecraft to orbit around the moon. This mission, however, will be fully crewed by four astronauts, compared to Artemis I’s unmanned orbit. Artemis II will mark the first time humans have been this close to the moon in decades, since the Apollo missions in the 1970s.
The Artemis program was announced by NASA in 2019 on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, the mission that had first put humans on the moon. The Artemis Program's goal is to put humans back into space and onto the moon again, as well as establish a permanent base on the moon. NASA had originally planned on putting a man and woman on the moon by 2024, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, technical issues and administrative issues, NASA was forced to push back the date by several years. The program began to garner success in 2022 because of the first Artemis launch, proving to the world that flights to the moon could happen in the near future.
Artemis II is set to launch in 2026 with the original date for the launch being in February and then being pushed back to March. The reason for these delays are due to technical issues with the original early February date being delayed on Feb 2. NASA engineers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida discovered a liquid hydrogen leak from the rocket. This delay caused the launch to be pushed back to early March. On Feb 25, the launch was delayed again due to a helium flow issue within the rocket. The current expected date for the rocket's launch is in early April as of writing this story.
The Artemis II crew is composed of four astronauts, Reid Wiseman, the Commander; Victor Glover, the Pilot; with Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen as the two Mission Specialists. The crew of the Artemis II is incredibly diverse with Glover being the first person of color to go to the moon, Koch to be the first woman to go to the moon, and Hansen, a part of the Canadian Space Agency, to be the first non-American to go to the moon. NASA anticipates the Artemis II mission to launch no earlier than April of this year.