GoKawiilThe astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission will see more of the Moon’s far side by eye than any human has before.Credit: NASA/JPL
If all goes to plan, as soon as tomorrow, NASA will launch four people on a journey around the Moon. The mission, known as Artemis II, would be the first time humans have left Earth’s protective environment and travelled into deep space since the US Apollo programme, which ended more than half a century ago. And it could carry its astronauts farther from Earth than any humans have ever travelled.
Artemis II is one in a series of missions that ultimately aim to build humanity’s first permanent base on the Moon. This mission is supposed to test the rocket, crew capsule and other space-flight hardware that NASA wants to use to land humans on the lunar surface in the coming years. During their nearly ten-day journey to the Moon and back, astronauts plan to run experiments that will set the stage for future explorers.
“What we’re trying to do is not pick up where Apollo left off, but to use our decades of experience and knowledge and planning to do this sustainable presence on the Moon — and then to do science alongside of that,” says Barbara Cohen, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The four Artemis II astronauts did a dress rehearsal in December for what will happen on launch day. Clockwise from front left are pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist Christina Koch and commander Reid Wiseman.Credit: Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty
Some of the key experiments that will be conducted during the Artemis II mission will explore how deep-space travel affects human health. Other research will rely on the astronauts’ ability to see geological features on parts of the Moon that have never been viewed by human eyes.
Cohen says the science findings from Artemis II will be fundamentally different from discoveries made previously by robots exploring the Solar System. “The amazing part of having crews is they have brains and eyes, and the capacity for thought and reaction,” so that they can “take the path of knowledge that is best for science”, she says.
The four astronauts who will fly aboard Artemis II have been through extensive science training, including field trips to sites in Canada and Iceland that are similar to the Moon’s otherworldly surface. One of the crew, Christina Koch, built space-science instruments before becoming an astronaut and has worked as a scientific field engineer in Antarctica and Greenland. Another, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, has a master’s degree in physics and worked in the underwater Aquarius laboratory off the coast of Florida.
“We’re excited about what the astronauts find interesting and what pulls their focus,” says Nicola Fox, head of NASA’s science mission directorate in Washington DC. “That is an incredible opportunity.”
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