The days and months pass, you’re watching a new video from a member of the Artemis II crew and he says something that makes you sit up and take notice.
“We are two and a half months away from our first possible launch date,” NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman said in his weekly update from Johnson Space Center in Texas, where he and fellow NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, have been in training since they were announced as part of the crew in 2023.
Yes, that’s right – people could fly to the moon again as early as February 2026.
In the crew’s latest weekly update, posted on Tuesday
The American astronaut provided his update from inside a model of the Orion spacecraft, which will take them on a ten-day journey around the moon.
Wiseman also presented the crew with the trusty Nikon D5 DSLR camera, which will capture historical images of their journey to Earth’s nearest neighbor.
The crew won’t land on the lunar surface, but their mission paves the way for Artemis III, which will put the first humans on the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. Artemis III is currently scheduled for 2027, although that date could well be pushed back as NASA and its partners continue the complex preparations for the highly anticipated mission.
NASA tested the Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis I mission, which took place in 2022. The flight revealed a number of problems with the capsule, which were resolved for the spacecraft’s first manned flight. The SLS rocket, which will carry astronauts into space, has also flown only once, also as part of the Artemis I mission.
The first Artemis missions lay the foundation for a permanent human presence on the Moon, including the construction of the Gateway lunar space station and eventual human missions to Mars.
Of course, it’s possible that the Artemis II crew won’t get off in February, with some saying a spring launch is more likely. Whatever the case, it finally feels like humanity’s historic flight is truly upon us.
