In recent months, the United States has made significant progress towards returning humans to the moon. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency plans to send a crew of four astronauts around the moon as early as February of next year.
This mission, Artemis II, will follow Artemis I (launched in November 2022), and will be the first time in over 50 years that humans have left Earth’s protective magnetic shield and ventured into deep space.
Artemis II will serve as the final full-length test of the SLS rocket and Orion space capsule before both are used to return astronauts to the lunar surface.
Similar to Apollo 8, Artemis II will carry the crew to a lunar flyby where they will pass approximately 6500km above the surface. During this flyby, the crew will make observations of the far side of the moon, seeing geological structures no human eye has seen.
Over the last several months, NASA has been busy stacking SLS inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center. Recently, despite the government shutdown, NASA has completed this process by integrating the Orion spacecraft to the top of the rocket. The entire Artemis II SLS is now complete and ready for pre-flight testing.
The rocket is expected to be rolled out to the launch pad by the end of the year, where it will remain until launch next February. Currently, NASA is planning to launch no earlier than February 5, 2026, though this is subject to change.
This comes at an awkward time for the agency. Not only has the government shutdown slowed NASA operations, the agency is also preparing for a change in leadership.
Since President Trump took office, there has been a degree of uncertainty as to who would lead NASA. At the beginning of the year, private astronaut and entrepreneur Jared Isaacman had been nominated by Trump to serve as administrator.
His nomination was pulled in May, primarily due to political reasons related to Elon Musk. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy was appointed to serve as Acting-Administrator, but a permanent solution for leadership seemed a long way off.
Earlier this month, however, Trump announced he would renominate Isaacman to serve as administrator for the remainder of his term. The announcement generated much excitement within the spaceflight community, as the last several weeks have seen a degree of turmoil regarding the future of NASA leadership.
The result of this turmoil is a general unpredictability about the United States’ role in the future of space exploration. As we have seen, China is making steady and coordinated progress towards their own moon landing sometime this decade.
In response, Isaacman has laid out a bold vision for NASA’s future. He sees the agency’s goal as being to focus on the “near-impossible” challenges that face space exploration. He has repeatedly mentioned nuclear propulsion as a project he would be interested in pursuing. Assuming he is confirmed by the Senate, only time will tell if these plans are able to give the United States government long-term momentum to match China’s ambitions.