{"id":540270,"date":"2026-04-20T01:17:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T01:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540270\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T01:17:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T01:17:30","slug":"nasa-confirms-when-humans-will-return-to-the-moons-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540270\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA confirms when humans will return to the Moon’s surface"},"content":{"rendered":"

Groundbreaking space voyages will take place in the coming years\"Astronaut<\/p>\n

Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., the lunar module pilot of the first lunar landing mission, stands next to a United States flag July 20, 1969 (Image: NASA\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The first manned Moon mission in more than 50 years, which blasted off from Cape Canaveral on April 1, took four astronauts deeper into space than anyone has gone before. The crew travelled 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the distance milestone of 248,655 miles which had previously been held by the Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.<\/p>\n

The voyage took the NASA crew members around the far side of the Moon, which included a 40-minute communication blackout when they were cut off entirely from their home planet. The Artemis II mission comes as the agency is seeking to return a crew to the lunar surface by early 2028, before China does so in about 2030.<\/p>\n

Artemis IV will mark the return of humans to the lunar surface<\/a>. Astronauts will travel to lunar orbit, where two crew members will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the Moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit to join their crew for the journey back to Earth.<\/p>\n

The mission will be one of the most complex undertakings of engineering and human ingenuity in the history of deep space exploration, exploring the lunar South Pole region.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Artemis II crew photographed craters dotting the surface of the Moon on Monday, April 6, 2026.(Image: AP)<\/p>\n

NASA said: “The astronauts’ observations, samples, and data collected will expand our understanding of our solar system and home planet.” NASA’s Artemis missions aim to establish a sustained lunar presence on and around the Moon.<\/p>\n

To achieve the national goal of landing American astronauts on the surface of the Moon, NASA announced on February 27 it is increasing its missions under the Artemis programme<\/a>, standardizing the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket configuration, and adding a new mission.<\/p>\n

This update focused on the transportation systems to take crew to the Moon. NASA’s latest architecture includes adding a new mission in 2027 to test system capabilities closer to home prior to sending astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n

Before 2028, NASA will undertake the Artemis III mission. It said: “NASA added a new demonstration mission in low Earth orbit in mid-2027 to test one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin respectively.<\/p>\n

“The mission will launch crew in Orion on top of the SLS rocket to test rendezvous and docking capabilities between Orion and private commercial spacecraft needed to land astronauts on the Moon. This test will take place with one or both providers.”<\/p>\n

\"NASA's<\/p>\n

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows a close-up of the red planet Mars(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Mars remains the horizon goal for human exploration <\/a>because it is one of the only other places we know where life may have existed in the solar system. NASA explained: “What we learn about the Red Planet will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future, and may help answer whether life exists beyond our home planet.”<\/p>\n

Engineers and scientists around the world are working to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars and safely return home to Earth. NASA is aiming to send astronauts to Mars as early as the 2030s<\/p>\n

When astronauts travel to Mars and back, their vehicle will return home with more than a billion miles on its odometer \u2014 more than a thousand times the distance that Artemis I travelled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Groundbreaking space voyages will take place in the coming years Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., the lunar module…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[23735,1813,90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-540270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-artemis-2","9":"tag-astronomy","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}