How Artemis II fits into Nasa’s Moon planspublished at 16:32 BST
16:32 BST
Rebecca Morelle
Science editor, reporting from the launch site
Image source, Reuters
The
Artemis I mission took place in 2022, and saw Nasa’s mega rocket – the Space
Launch System (SLS) – and the Orion capsule fly for the first time on a 25-day
mission around the Moon.
But
there were no humans onboard.
For
Artemis II, astronauts are very much at the front and centre of the mission.
The crew will be the first people to fly in the SLS and Orion as they travel
around the Moon – their mission will last about 10 days.
The
plans for Artemis III have recently been overhauled by Nasa. It was originally
supposed to see astronauts land on the lunar surface, and was scheduled for
2028.
Instead
the crew will stay closer to home – and in 2027 they’ll fly on Orion to
low-Earth orbit, and test docking with a lunar lander.
Artemis
IV and V will now become lunar landing missions – and Nasa says it’s aiming for
both to happen in 2028. But this is an ambitious timeline.
Two
companies – Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin – are building
lunar landers. But it’s not clear which one will be used for the docking test
with Artemis III, or which will be selected for the first lunar landing.
Eventually, Nasa plans to build a lunar base. But plans to construct a space station
called Gateway to orbit around the Moon have been paused.