What is Artemis II? (Published 2023) (2024)

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NASA’s Artemis II astronauts reflect a wider swath of society.

Astronauts in 2023 are much different from those when the United States was in a race to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. During the Apollo program, 24 astronauts flew to the moon, and 12 of them stepped on the surface. All of them were Americans. All of them were white men, many of whom were test pilots.

This time, the astronaut corps reflects a much wider swath of society.

They are Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander; Victor Glover, the pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and, Jeremy Hansen, also a mission specialist. The first three are NASA astronauts, while Mr. Hansen is a member of the Canadian Space Agency.

“When we were selecting astronauts back then,” Mr. Glover said in an interview, “we intended to select the same person, just multiple copies.”

Ms. Koch will be the first woman to venture beyond low-Earth orbit, and Mr. Hansen, as a Canadian, the first non-American to travel that far.

“So am I excited?” Ms. Koch said during an event unveiling the crew at Ellington Field, a small airport used by NASA for the training of astronauts. “Absolutely. But my real question is: are you excited?”

The assembled crowd cheered in response.

The mission is a major step in NASA’s Artemis program to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon to explore the cold regions near the moon’s south pole. Water ice found in deep dark craters there could supply water and oxygen for future astronauts as well as fuel for missions deeper into space.

“Together, we are going — to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond,” said Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator.

But the four astronauts aboard this next mission, Artemis II, will not land on the moon.

Instead, the travelers will take a 10-day journey that will swing around the moon and come back to Earth. It is currently scheduled for late next year.

“It’s an exciting time for the Artemis people, no question about it,” Harrison Schmitt, the last surviving astronaut from Apollo 17, said in an interview. He added that many people did not “fully realize that we’re about three generations away from any experience with human beings being in deep space, and that’s probably the most important part of the mission.”

Dr. Schmitt, who is also a former United States senator from New Mexico, said he was not necessarily surprised that it had taken so long. “I would say I’m disappointed,” he said. “A lot of things conspired to stop the Apollo program and to keep us from going back for quite a while.”

Mr. Hansen noted that the United States could have undertaken the Artemis missions by itself but instead chose to pull together an international collaboration with Canada and the European Space Agency. That agreement reserved a seat for a Canadian astronaut on Artemis II. “All of Canada is grateful for that global mind-set and that leadership,” Mr. Hansen said.

As the name of the mission indicates, Artemis II will be the second in NASA’s Artemis program. Artemis I launched last November as an uncrewed test of the Space Launch System, NASA’s giant new rocket, and the Orion astronaut capsule. The Orion spacecraft spent two weeks in orbit around the moon before returning to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific.

After years of delay — development of the rocket took longer than originally promised — the Artemis I mission progressed smoothly for the most part, although some problems occurred. The heat shield of Orion protected the spacecraft during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, but more of it came off than had been expected.

Artemis II, with four astronauts aboard, will allow a full check of the Orion’s life support systems. Then NASA officials will feel more confident in undertaking the longer, more complex Artemis III mission, which will include two astronauts landing near the south pole.

Mr. Wiseman, Mr. Glover and Ms. Koch all said they were not disappointed that being part of the Artemis II crew rules out the possibility of walking on the moon during Artemis III.

“This is going to probably sound cliché,” Mr. Wiseman said, “but just flying on any of these missions is an enormous thing. It’s fantastic. I love the idea of going out past the moon.”

He added, “Watching our astronaut colleagues walk on the moon will be a success for us.”

After a long afternoon of interviews with reporters, the four astronauts left the Johnson Space Center, accompanied by a police escort, to NRG Stadium in Houston to watch the NCAA men’s basketball championship game between the University of Connecticut and San Diego State University.

NASA is currently aiming for that first moon landing to occur in late 2025, but the NASA inspector general has predicted the mission would slip to 2026 or later. The Artemis III mission requires the use of Starship — the giant spacecraft being developed by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company — to take the two astronauts from a distant lunar orbit to the surface. The first test launch of Starship to space might take off in the coming weeks.

In the 1960s, the space race reflected the geopolitical jousting between the United States and the Soviet Union. Once the race was won, interest in the moon by the public, politicians and even NASA waned.

There are some geopolitical echoes this time too. China is also aiming to send astronauts to the moon in the coming years. But it is not just governments aiming for the moon now.

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, has bought a trip on Starship that would loop around the moon similar to the trajectory that Artemis II will take. Dennis Tito, an entrepreneur who was the first space tourist to visit the International Space Station in 2001, and his wife, Akiko, have booked seats on a separate Starship trip around the moon.

Five decades ago, that would have been like a billionaire buying a Saturn V, the rocket that propelled the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Today, it seems almost inevitable that the footprints of tourists will crisscross the lunar surface in the years to come.

In an interview, Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who retired in 2013 after three trips to space, compared space travel to the early days of aviation. The wobbly craft that the Wright Brothers built in 1903 flew, but barely. But progress was fast. The first flight for KLM, the Dutch airline, was in 1920.

“Seventeen years from the Wright brothers to a profitable airline that’s still around,” Mr. Hadfield said.

He added that innovation had greatly reduced the cost of leaving Earth.

“You can see that the cost is going to keep coming down as the vehicles get better proven, and that’s going to increase the access and opportunity,” Mr. Hadfield said.

For the Artemis II astronauts, Dr. Schmitt offered some simple advice: “Just enjoy it,” he said.

Vjosa Isai and Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.

A busy year ahead on the moon.

Landing on the moon is perilous, and attempts by India and an Israeli nonprofit ended in crashes in 2019. If Ispace succeeds in touching down on the moon’s surface in one piece, it will be the first private lunar mission to do so.

If it fails, two American companies will instead vie for the first private lunar landing. They are both participants in a program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, in which NASA pays private businesses to send experiments to the surface to the moon.

The first two missions, from Intuitive Machines of Houston and Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, plan to launch during the year after considerable delays. Astrobotic’s spacecraft, lofted by the new Vulcan Centaur rocket, could launch in May and head to the northeast border of the Ocean of Storms on the moon’s near side. Intuitive Machines’ lander, which could be launched as early as late June on a SpaceX rocket, will head to the lunar south pole. NASA selected both landing sites for their science value for future Artemis missions.

Private companies won’t be the only visitors to the moon in 2023. Three government space programs’ lunar missions also intend to head there. India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission was delayed last year but could be ready in the summer. A Japanese mission, Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, aims to test the country’s lunar landing technologies, but could be delayed because of a problem with its rocket. Finally, Russia’s Luna-25 mission was postponed from last September, but Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, may try this year.

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It’s been more than 50 years since astronauts visited the moon.

Their formal goodbyes had already been delivered to the TV cameras. The only thing left to do was to work down a few prelaunch checklists, depart to meet with Ronald E. Evans in the command module and then head home to Earth. “Now, let’s get off,” Cernan said, and so they did, their craft climbing up from the moon’s gray desolation until it was lost in a black sky.

While many Americans in 2019 celebrated the 50 years after Apollo 11 first put Neil and Buzz on the moon, the recent 50th anniversary of the conclusion of Apollo 17 carried more than a twinge of sadness for fans of space exploration. For a brief few years, the Earth and moon were linked by a bridge built through ingenuity, technology and vast sums of taxpayer money.

Countless imaginary space futures had blossomed out from this point: spinning space stations, boots on Mars, humanity reaching toward the edge of the solar system. Then it all went up in one last plume of rocket exhaust.

A half-century later, disagreements persist about why we go to the moon. Or how. Or whether we should even try. Yet it’s hard to see the imagery that was beamed home to Earth from the Artemis I mission to the moon last November and December and not feel something.

Artemis III and beyond.

During the Apollo moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s, a lunar lander was packed into the Saturn V rocket. The lander for Artemis III will be a version of a Starship rocket built by SpaceX. The lunar Starship will be launched separately. Additional Starships would then launch to refill the propellant tanks of the lunar Starship before it left Earth orbit.

At the moon, the Starship lander will enter what is known as a near-rectilinear halo orbit, or N.R.H.O.

Halo orbits are influenced by the gravities of two bodies — in this case, the Earth and the moon — which help to make the orbit highly stable, minimizing the amount of propellant needed to keep a spacecraft circling the moon. A spacecraft in this orbit also never passes behind the moon, where communications with Earth are cut off.

Once Starship is in orbit around the moon, the Space Launch System rocket will send four astronauts in an Orion capsule to the same near-rectilinear halo orbit. The Orion will dock with the Starship. Two astronauts will move to the Starship rocket, landing near the moon’s South Pole, while the other two astronauts will remain in orbit in Orion.

After about a week on the surface, the two moon-walking astronauts will blast off in Starship and rendezvous with Orion in orbit. Orion will then take the four astronauts back to Earth.

Last August, NASA announced 13 potential landing sites near the moon’s south pole.

There will then be a lull until at least September 2028 when the astronauts aboard Artemis IV will head to Gateway, a space station-like outpost that NASA will build in the same near-rectilinear halo orbit used for Artemis III. That mission will use a Space Launch System rocket with an upgraded second stage, providing enough power to take along Gateway’s habitat module.

Originally, NASA planned for Artemis IV to focus on the construction of Gateway. It has since decided that the mission would also include a trip to the lunar surface. Last month, NASA announced SpaceX would provide the lander for Artemis IV.

For Artemis V and later missions, the lunar lander will be docked at Gateway. Astronauts will arrive at the Gateway on Orion, then move to the lander for the journey to the lunar surface.

NASA is now considering bids for a different company to provide the lander for Artemis V.

Among the companies that may be bidding to build a competing lander are Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

NASA would then run a competition for future lunar landers similar to how it hired companies to take cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.

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Why NASA is trying to return to the moon.

“It’s a future where NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference in 2022. “And on these increasingly complex missions, astronauts will live and work in deep space and will develop the science and technology to send the first humans to Mars.”

NASA is also hoping to jump-start companies looking to set up a steady business of flying scientific instruments and other payloads to the moon and to inspire students to enter science and engineering fields.

For scientists, the renewed focus on the moon promises a bonanza of new data in the coming years. There is a particular interest in the amount of water ice on the moon, which could be used for astronauts’ water and oxygen supplies in the future and could provide fuel for missions deeper into space.

Scientists do not really know how much water is on the moon or how easy it will be to extract the water from the surrounding rock and soil. Future missions could help to resolve that question.

Outsize contributions earn Canada a ride to the moon.

“I think it’s a really nice reflection of the long partnership between Canada and the United States,” said Chris Hadfield, who joined NASA on three missions to orbit, performed the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut and commanded the International Space Station before retiring.

Mr. Hansen, 47, praised American leadership and the work of Canada’s scientists, engineers, military and government after he was introduced at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday.

“All of our leadership, working together under a vision,” that he said went “step by step.” He said those efforts “added up to this moment where a Canadian is going to the moon with our international partnership, and it is glorious.”

The Canadian Space Agency secured Mr. Hansen’s spot in 2020 through an agreement with NASA. Canada committed to provide a robotic arm called the Canadarm3 for Gateway, an American-led outpost that is to orbit the moon.

“There’s only 24 people in the history of the world who’ve seen the full circle of the earth, and they’re all Americans,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an animated call with Mr. Hansen, shared on YouTube. “Well, you will be the first Canadian, the first non-American. This is a big deal.”

Canada was the first country to back Gateway in 2019, building on its expertise in robotic arms such as the Canadarm2, which has been used by astronauts on the International Space Station since 2011. The next-generation robotic system, Canadarm3, will use artificial intelligence to automate tasks like moving tools around the Gateway outpost and conducting repairs.

This complex engineering feat will be bolstered by part of the 2.5 billion Canadian dollars announced in the federal budget last week. Roughly 1.1 billion of those funds will support the country’s presence at the International Space Station until 2023. The government is also committing 1.2 billion dollars toward a lunar utility vehicle to help astronauts on the moon.

Still, the government’s spending lags behind other countries.

“Canada has always punched above its weight when you look at the relatively small space budget we have,” said Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist at Western University in London, Ontario, who is training potential Artemis astronauts in geology.

Mr. Hadfield said Canada’s ties to the American space program go back decades, to the launch of the Canadian-built Alouette 1 satellite on an American rocket. Canada was the third country, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to get a satellite to orbit.

Canada’s space work force employs more than 10,000 people. About one-third of companies in the sector reported hiring challenges for skilled positions, but it has seen bustling activity in commercialization despite an 11 percent dip in revenues from government-funded projects in 2019, according to a Canadian Space Agency report.

Some of the companies making waves in the sector are fairly new. Canadensys Aerospace Corporation, founded in 2013, was recently awarded the contract to build Canada’s first moon rover and could launch as soon as 2026.

Dr. Osinski, who is also the principal investigator for that rover mission, said he’s “incredibly excited” about the Monday announcement.

“To think that out of all the countries on Earth, we’ll have a Canadian onboard Artemis II,” he said, noting that Canada would be only the second country to send a person into deep space. “It’s a big day.”

Kenneth Chang contributed reporting.

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How the Artemis II astronauts will get to the moon.

The Orion capsule is designed for trips that last weeks in deep space, beyond low-Earth orbit where humanity has loitered for half a century since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. Orion, while bigger than the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that takes astronauts to the International Space Station, has a bit less space on the inside to make room for more robust systems to meet all of NASA’s requirements including robust life support systems.

But Orion can’t get to the moon on its own. Astronauts will need a big rocket, in the form of the Space Launch System — the most powerful one since Saturn V took NASA astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the one that lifted Artemis I in November, the rocket will be 322 feet tall and weigh 5.5 million pounds when filled with propellants.

It will be able to lift more than 200,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit and send nearly 60,000 pounds of payload to the moon.

S.L.S. resembles a stretched external tank that was used by the retired space shuttles, and the side boosters are longer versions that were attached to the shuttle’s external tank.

This is by design: To simplify the development of its new moon rocket, NASA reused much of its 1970s space shuttle technology. The rocket’s central stage is the same 27.6-foot diameter as the 1970s shuttle’s external tank, and it is covered with the same orange insulation.

The four engines in the core stage are the same as the space shuttle main engines. In fact, the first three Artemis missions will actually use engines that were pulled from the old shuttles and refurbished. But because none of the S.L.S. rockets will be used more than once, NASA will run out of old shuttle engines after Artemis IV and need new ones for Artemis V and later.

During the shuttle era, NASA recovered and reused the side rocket boosters. For the Space Launch System, which will launch infrequently, the agency decided it would be easier and more economical to let the boosters sink into the ocean and use new ones for each flight.

The second stage of the S.L.S. is essentially a modification of the one used for another rocket called Delta IV. A new upgraded second stage will be used for Artemis IV, making the rocket even more powerful.

Development of the Orion crew capsule started in 2006 as part of Constellation, an earlier moon program started under President George W. Bush. Costs for Constellation soared, and the Obama administration tried to cancel it entirely in 2010.

However, Congress rebelled against that decision, leading to a revival of Orion and the creation of the Space Launch System, which largely resembles Ares V, the heavy-lift rocket that was planned for Constellation.

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Meet the four astronauts of Artemis II.

Reid Wiseman, commander

Until recently, G. Reid Wiseman, 47, served as NASA’s chief astronaut, meaning that he would have been responsible for selecting the four astronauts that flew on Artemis II. But he stepped down from that post last November, and became eligible for assignment to the moon-bound crews of the Artemis missions.

Selected as part of the 2009 astronaut class, Mr. Wiseman, a captain in the United States Navy, spent 165 days in orbit at the International Space Station in 2014. Before joining NASA, he served two deployments in the Middle East.

Victor Glover, pilot

Victor J. Glover, Jr., 46, was the pilot of the first operational mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station from November 2020 to May 2021. He spent 168 days on the space station. He was the first Black man assigned as a crew member on the station — and participated in four spacewalks. Mr. Glover, a captain in the United States Navy, was selected to be an astronaut in 2013.

Originally from Pomona, Calif., Mr. Glover graduated with a bachelor’s degree in general engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 1999. From 2007 through 2010, he earned three master’s degrees: in flight test engineering, systems engineering and military operational art and science.

Mr. Glover is often referred to by his counterparts as Ike, a nod to a call sign a former commanding officer gave him that stands for “I know everything.”

Christina Koch, mission specialist

Christina H. Koch, 44, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman — 328 days — and she, with another active astronaut, Jessica Meir, performed the first three all-women spacewalks in 2019 and 2020. She also conducted three other spacewalks. Her six spacewalks totaled 42 hours and 15 minutes.

Before being selected as an astronaut in 2013, Ms. Koch worked as an electrical engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. She later became a researcher in the United States Antarctic Program, which included a yearlong stay at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Other places she has worked include the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spending time in Alaska and American Samoa.

Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist

Jeremy Hansen is one of four active Canadian astronauts. He was selected by the Canadian Space Agency to be an astronaut in 2009. He is 47 years old and was born in Ontario.

Col. Hansen, who served as a fighter pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces, has yet to fly to space. In his time representing the Canadian Space Agency at NASA, he has served as a capsule communicator between mission control in Houston and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. He was also the first Canadian tasked with leading an astronaut class.

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Who gets to be a NASA astronaut?

But those are still really good odds compared to what NASA astronaut applicants face.

The last time the space agency opened the door for a new class of astronauts, more than 12,000 people applied. In December 2021, NASA selected 10 of them — a rejection rate of more than 99.9 percent. That was actually a bump upward from the previous round, in 2017, when 18,300 people applied, and NASA chose just 12.

Not all of the astronauts at NASA are eligible to fly into space. Some have taken management positions at the space agency, including Pamela Melroy, NASA’s current deputy administrator, and hence are known as management astronauts. They cannot be assigned to a mission unless they relinquish their position and return to the roster of active astronauts.

That leaves 41 astronauts currently regarded as active at NASA. It is from this group that the agency is choosing the four astronauts who will get to travel to the moon during the Artemis II mission.

(Members of the newest class of 10 are not eligible for Artemis II. They have not yet completed their initial training, and remain “astronaut candidates.” They might be ready by the time the crew for Artemis III is chosen.)

In December 2020, NASA announced an “Artemis team” of 18 astronauts, suggesting that the crews of the early missions would be selected from this group. But in August of last year, Reid Wiseman, the head of the astronaut office, said all active astronauts would be considered.

“We want to assemble the right team for this mission,” he said.

Except that it is the head of the astronaut office, and his or her deputy, who are in charge of assigning crews, and they are not allowed to choose themselves.

Mr. Wiseman has since stepped down from that position, as has his deputy, Andrew Feustel, so both men are now eligible for Artemis II. Their replacements — Joseph Acaba as head of the office and Shannon Walker as the deputy — are not.

Astronauts currently in orbit at the International Space Station, as well as those who will be heading there for six months later this year, are also unlikely to be chosen for Artemis II; they would not have time to train.

Then again, some astronauts might be happy they were not selected for the swing around the moon on Artemis II. Because that would mean they are still available for the biggest moment of the program — the first moon landing during Artemis III.

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What is Artemis II?

There will be four astronauts aboard Artemis II. Three will be from NASA, and one will be Canadian, part of the agreement spelling out the Canadian Space Agency’s participation in the Artemis program.

The trajectory of Artemis II will be fairly simple. After launch, the second stage of the Space Launch System will push Orion into an elliptical orbit that loops as far out as 1,800 miles above Earth, giving the astronauts time to see how Orion’s systems work.

Then, when Orion speeds around again, its engine will fire to send it toward the moon. For Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft will not enter orbit around the moon; it will instead use the moon’s gravity to sling back to Earth for a Pacific Ocean splashdown. The entire trip should take around 10 days.

Watch a rerun of Artemis I’s launch to the moon.

“I’m telling you we’d never seen such a tail of flame,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said after the flight in November.

The Artemis I mission lasted 26 days, with the Orion capsule orbiting the moon before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11.

NASA had three primary objectives during the flight:

• Demonstrate that the new giant Space Launch System rocket worked to deliver the Orion crew capsule into orbit.

• See how well Orion operated for three weeks in the vacuum of space, pelted by radiation.

• Verify that Orion’s heat shield could survive the re-entry thought Earth’s atmosphere, arriving at a velocity of 24,600 miles per hour. As it slammed into the air, the heat shield reached temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The mission was a success, although not a perfect one. There were some minor glitches with the capsule’s systems. Orion’s heat shield performed well enough to protect the spacecraft as it re-entered the atmosphere, but not as well as designed.

“We had more liberation of the charred material during re-entry before we landed than we had expected,” Howard Hu, manager of the Orion program at NASA, said during a news conference in March.