NASA officials on Tuesday said that the first crew of the agency in his Artemis program – a journey around the moon and back – is on its way for the launch in April and possibly moved until February.
The Artemis program of the Space Agency is the US’s flagship to bring people back to the Moon, a series of missions of millions of dollars that are a similar effort from China, which strives for an astronaut of astronaut Moon Landing.
Artemis 2, a 10-day flight in which a crew of four astronauts will fly around the moon and back, is a precursor test for the first astronaut of the office since 1972.
That mission, Artemis 3, is a much more ambitious and complex company that is currently planned for 2027 and with a Moon Lander variant of SpaceX’s Starship Rocket.
Artemis 2 includes NASA’s Rocket space system, built by Boeing and Northrop Grumman, and his Orion Capsule, built by Lockheed Martin. Last year NASA delayed the mission with a few months to April 2026.
“We are planning to keep that dedication,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, an acting high officer in the exploration unit of NASA, during a press conference on Tuesday of the date of 2026.
She added that the willingness of NASA’s SLS and Orion spacecraft could possibly justify an earlier launch date, but that safety reasons will ultimately lead when the mission is launched.
The Orion Capsule runs on top of the gigantic, 322-foot long (98 meters) SLS rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first time that the spacecraft duo will fly with people.
Artemis 2 will fly with astronauts Reid Wiseman, the commander of the mission who last flew on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the international space station; Victor Glover, the pilot who flew to space in 2020 on a SpaceX ISS mission; Christina Koch, a mission specialist who flew on a Soyuz ISS mission in 2019; And the Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, another mission specialist who will fly to space for the first time.
The recording of Hansen will mark the first Canadian to fly near the moon.
