Wednesday, April 1, may have been April Fool’s Day, but there was no fooling around when NASA’s Artemis II mission launched into space at 6:25 p.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As many people’s eyes were on the sky or watching their televisions and tablets, this flight marked the first time a manned U.S. craft had been sent toward the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. While Artemis II was not a space shuttle (it used the Orion capsule for crew transport) the mission generated a great deal of excitement surrounding space exploration.
The crew aboard the Artemis II mission, which included three American astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, didn’t land on the moon; the excursion was a 10day journey around the moon and back. It followed the Artemis I mission in 2022, which tested the Orion spacecraft and the SLS rocket. However, the goal of the Artemis program in general is a gradual step toward long-term return to the moon and future mis-sions to Mars, according to NASA. Under Artemis, astronauts will go on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the moon for scientific purposes and economic benefits. There’s also the prize of the U.S. sending the first crewed mission to Mars in the future.
Those who were excited to witness this history- making event back in April should be pleased to learn this is only the beginning. NASA has plans to keep the Artemis momentum running in the years ahead. Artemis III (2027) will be designed to test commercial lunar landers and put astronauts back on the moon. There are plans to send two Artemis missions to the moon in 2028 to continue to build a sustainable presence and develop moon infrastructure for permanent lunar exploration. Subsequent missions will be planned roughly once per year.
Space exploration is once again exciting the general public, with the Artemis program making headway to consistent exploration beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
