Mission experts preview the Artemis II mission timeline and spacecraft operations during a briefing regarding the 2026 April launch at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday.Annie Mulligan/The Globe and Mail
The countdown has not yet started for NASA’s Artemis II mission, but the clock is definitely ticking.
The U.S. space agency has committed to launching the rocket that will fling Canadian astronaut Colonel Jeremy Hansen and his three American crewmates around the moon and back by next April.
With that deadline now looming on the horizon, administrators and engineers charged with getting the mission off the ground gathered at the Johnson Space Center on Tuesday to offer a preview of what to expect.
“I feel like we have a front seat to a history-making experience,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development mission directorate during a news briefing.
Certainly, if all goes to plan, the flight of Artemis II will be a memorable one. It’s unlikely that anyone under the age of 60 today can remember anything like it.
Lakiesha Hawkins smiles as she listens to a question about exploration during a briefing regarding the launch of Artemis II.Annie Mulligan/The Globe and Mail
The closest comparison is Apollo 8, which in December, 1968, carried a three-man crew around the moon’s far side for the first time as a precursor to the Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later.
Artemis II is similarly intended to be a trailblazer for a future lunar landing. In the process, Col. Hansen is set to become the first Canadian to travel beyond the orbit of the International Space Station and out to Earth’s celestial neighbour located roughly 1,000 times farther away.
He’ll be joined on the journey by mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and fellow mission specialist Christina Koch. The quartet has been training for the trip for the past two-and-a-half years.
Once launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the mission will spend its first leg in Earth’s orbit. There, the Orion crew module will separate from its spent propulsion stage and the crew will demonstrate a manoeuvre that will show how the module can dock with other vehicles when sending future teams to the moon’s surface.
Orion will then fire its engines for the lunar portion of the trip, executing a wide figure eight around the moon before returning to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific.
Compared to Apollo 8, the Artemis II flight plan does not call for an especially close approach to the pockmarked lunar surface. At best, the Orion crew module will come within 9,260 kilometres of the moon.
Space suits are displayed outside of Teague Auditorium at Johnson Space Center.Annie Mulligan/The Globe and Mail
According to Jeff Radigan, lead flight director for Artemis II, the crew will see an orb that looks about as large as a basketball held at arm’s length.
That’s still closer than any human being has come to the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. And because of the capsule’s trajectory, the 10-day mission will venture farther from Earth than any previous crew ever has ever gone.
What matters most to NASA and its international partners is that the mission brings them closer to the goal of establishing a long-term presence on the moon.
With an administration in Washington apparently ready to slash NASA’s budget and China moving forward with its own lunar program, officials were more candid than usual about the urgency they are feeling.
Ms. Hawkins said the agency was considering whether Artemis II could launch as early as Feb. 5 next year. She added that signals from the White House have been clear that the U.S. has entered into “what people commonly call a second space race.”
So, too, have NASA’s partners, including Canada, who are signatories to the Artemis accords – a pact intended to guide the safe and peaceful exploration of the moon and beyond.
Canada’s material participation in the entire Artemis program has earned Col. Hansen his seat. Canadian aerospace companies are also on the bandwagon, developing components and technologies for what governments on both sides of the border hope will be an emerging lunar economy and a springboard to Mars.
For this reason, much depends on the crew and Orion’s performance.
NASA leaders explain their objectives during an Artemis II science and technology briefing at Johnson Space Center.Annie Mulligan/The Globe and Mail
In November, 2022, the vehicle’s maiden flight was an uncrewed test of NASA’s new space launch system and Orion capsule. Though delayed by fuel leaks on the launch pad, the mission was a success. However, engineers were concerned to see that pieces of the capsule’s heat shield had popped off during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, a potential safety issue for future missions with crew.
This pushed off Artemis II by more than a year until engineers were satisfied they understood how and why gasses trapped within the heat shield expanded and pushed the material apart. The Artemis II capsule is protected by the same material but it will enter the atmosphere on a different trajectory.
On Tuesday, engineers said that numerous tests have demonstrated that the problem will not reoccur on Artemis II.
By the time Artemis III carries a team of astronauts down to the lunar surface as early as mid-2027, the capsule will be protected by a slightly different formulation that is more porous and allows the bubbling hot gas to escape more easily, said Howard Hu, the Orion capsule program manager.
Whereas the purpose of Artemis I was to thoroughly assess the machine behind the mission, Artemis II is intended to reveal what it’s like to fly with a human crew on board. That means testing systems that are part of keeping the crew alive and able to do their work, but also testing operations in the module and on the ground that facilitate a smooth and productive mission.
Ultimately, the goal of Artemis II is to begin writing the playbook for future lunar and then interplanetary travel.
But before that, Dr. Hu said, there is one question he is most looking forward to having the crew answer: What is it like to live in the spaceship he and his team spent so many years creating?
“It’s a first test drive with people,” he said. “We hand the keys to them and they get a chance to check it out and tell us how it is.”