NASA plans to send manned Moon mission by February 2026

The agency announced that the first crewed flight in its Artemis program could travel around the moon and back as early as February, suggesting that NASA may be returning to the moon months earlier than originally anticipated.

The United States’ flagship mission, Artemis, is a multibillion-dollar series of missions that compete with China’s ambitious 2030 mission to land astronauts on the moon.

In November of this year, an uncrewed spacecraft orbited the moon and traveled back.

The 10-day mission Artemis II, which travels around the moon and back, aims to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to lay the groundwork for the first crewed missions to Mars,” according to NASA.

The Artemis II crew won’t make it to the moon, but it will be the first to leave low Earth orbit since 1972, according to the BBC.

The mission was originally scheduled for April, but it might have been moved up until February.

In a press conference on Tuesday, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA, Lakiesha Hawkins, said, “We have a front row seat to history.” The launch window may open as early as February 5th, but we want to stress that safety is our top priority.

A moonlander variant of SpaceX’s Starship rocket will be used as a test for the agency’s more ambitious mission, Artemis III, which is currently scheduled for 2027. The moon landing is the aim of Artemis III.

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and its Orion capsule are involved in Artemis II. The Kennedy Space Center in Florida will host the first spacecraft duo to fly with humans, and the Orion capsule will ascend to the enormous, 98-meter (322 feet) SLS rocket.