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All the news of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s attempt to returns humans to the Moon

The Trump administration wants to get humans back to the Moon — fast. In April of 2019, Vice President Mike Pence challenged NASA with putting people on the lunar surface by 2024, a deadline just five years away. NASA accepted and has since named this ambitious initiative Artemis — a nod to the Greek goddess and twin sister of Apollo, whose name was given to NASA’s first program to send humans to the Moon.

This time around, NASA wants things to be different. The goal of Artemis is to create a sustainable presence near the Moon, instead of just sending humans to plant flags and make footprints. The agency also aims to send the first woman to the Moon through the Artemis program.

The odds are stacked against NASA’s lofty goals. The agency has a whole lot of new hardware to build over the next five years, and it still doesn’t have a firm budget from Congress. If the agency doesn’t get that funding, the 2024 deadline could easily slip away. But even if the money does come through, NASA doesn’t have a great reputation for meeting deadlines, either. There’s no room for error, and it’s unclear if NASA has the ability to navigate the political and technical risks to pull this off.

  • NASA’s Artemis mission to take humans back to the Moon has been delayed until 2025

    NASA has pushed back its timeline for the crewed Artemis missions that will send human beings to the Moon. The first one, Artemis II, was supposed to take place later this year, but now it will launch in September 2025 to orbit the Earth’s satellite, with the landing mission, Artemis III, now planned for a year later in September 2026. NASA said the Artemis IV mission to take humans to the lunar Gateway space station in 2028 is still on track.

    The future missions are intended to “establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon” and “land the first woman and the first person of color” on its surface. The Artemis missions use NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which was also subject to years of setbacks before NASA deemed it ready for duty.

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  • Nov 15, 2022

    Emma Roth and Mary Beth Griggs

    How to watch NASA’s Artemis I SLS megarocket launch

    Artemis I Rollout
    Photo by Joel Kowsky / NASA via Getty Images

    NASA’s massive Space Launch System (SLS) is almost ready for liftoff after facing multiple setbacks, including two scrubbed launch attempts and two hurricane-caused delays. This highly anticipated rocket launch has been over a decade in the making and marks NASA’s return to crewed missions to the Moon. This mission is called Artemis I, and while there won’t be any astronauts on board during this launch, it will serve as a test for the future goal of putting the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon.

    During its first launch, the SLS will catapult NASA’s Orion capsule into space, where it will embark on a voyage around the Moon that is expected to last until December 11th, when it will splash back down into the ocean. On November 4th, NASA rolled the rocket back out to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida — a four-mile journey that took nearly nine hours.

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  • Andrew J. Hawkins

    Aug 31, 2022

    Andrew J. Hawkins

    NASA moves next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to September 3rd

    NASA/Ben Smegelsky

    Clear your plans on Saturday: NASA says we’re going to have a rocket launch.

    The space agency moved the date for the next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to Saturday, September 3rd, after determining that the initial plan for Friday was going to run into bad weather.

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  • Kim Lyons

    Apr 9, 2021

    Kim Lyons

    NASA seeks to put first person of color on the Moon in Artemis mission

    Image: NASA

    Acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk said Friday that under President Biden’s budget request, the agency’s Artemis mission has a new goal: in addition to landing the first woman on the Moon, it will also send the first person of color to the lunar surface. So far, the only Earthlings to touch the Moon’s surface have been white men.

    “The president’s discretionary request increases NASA’s ability to better understand Earth and further monitor and predict the impacts of climate change,” Jurczyk said in a statement. “It also gives us the necessary resources to continue advancing America’s bipartisan Moon to Mars space exploration plan, including landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon under the Artemis program.”

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  • Loren Grush

    Dec 18, 2020

    Loren Grush

    NASA will fly Orion deep-space crew capsule ‘as is,’ despite failed component

    NASA’s Orion capsule attached to its adapter and service module.
    NASA’s Orion capsule attached to its adapter and service module.
    Photo by Ben Smegelsky / NASA

    NASA is opting to fly its future deep-space crew capsule Orion “as is” next year, after the agency discovered that one of the spacecraft’s power instruments had suffered a failure. Engineers had been mulling over whether to replace the instrument before the vehicle’s flight but ultimately decided that there was enough redundancy in the system to withstand the failed component.

    “NASA has confidence in the health of the overall power and data system, which has been through thousands of hours of powered operations and testing,” the agency wrote in a blog post announcing the decision. “Engineers will perform additional testing and continue to monitor the health of the spacecraft while Orion is powered on to provide continued confidence in the system.”

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  • A Canadian astronaut will fly around the Moon on the first crewed mission of NASA’s new rocket

    One of Canada’s astronauts will be sent around the Moon as part of a partnership between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), NASA announced today. The two organizations have formally agreed to collaborate on building a lunar space station called the Lunar Gateway. The Gateway is just one part of NASA’s larger Artemis program, which is focused on landing a woman on the Moon by 2024.

    A Canadian astronaut will participate in NASA’s planned Artemis II mission, and the CSA also has a seat on a future flight to the Gateway once it is complete. By joining the Artemis II mission, Canada will become the second country to have an astronaut fly around the Moon, the CSA says. Canada currently has just four active astronauts, and the CSA has not announced which will be participating in this partnership.

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  • Loren Grush

    Dec 9, 2020

    Loren Grush

    At his last Space Council meeting, Mike Pence announces new cadre of lunar astronauts

    On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence hosted his last meeting of the National Space Council in Florida, using the opportunity to announce a list of NASA astronauts who will be considered for future missions to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

    This cadre of astronauts — dubbed the Artemis Team — includes 18 astronauts, some with past flight experience and some who have yet to fly to space. The list includes some notable names, such as Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, the two women who made history by performing the first all-women spacewalk. Two of the astronauts, Victor Glover and Kate Rubins, are currently living on board the International Space Station. Five of the 18 made an appearance at the National Space Council meeting today at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida: Meir, Jessica Watkins, Anne McClain, Matthew Dominick, and Joe Acaba.

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  • Loren Grush

    Nov 30, 2020

    Loren Grush

    Component failure in NASA’s deep-space crew capsule could take months to fix

    Engineers are racing to fix a failed piece of equipment on NASA’s future deep-space crew capsule Orion ahead of its first flight to space. It may require months of work to replace and fix. Right now, engineers at NASA and Orion’s primary contractor, Lockheed Martin, are trying to figure out the best way to fix the component and how much time the repairs are going to take.

    In early November, engineers at Lockheed Martin working on Orion noticed that a power component inside the vehicle had failed, according to an internal email and an internal PowerPoint presentation seen by The Verge. The component is within one of the spacecraft’s eight power and data units, or PDUs. The PDUs are the “main power/data boxes,” for Orion according to the email, responsible for activating key systems that Orion needs during flight.

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  • Loren Grush

    Nov 10, 2020

    Loren Grush

    Senate committee’s budget for lunar landers falls short of NASA request

    Senate appropriators are proposing to allocate $1 billion to NASA next year for the construction of new lunar landers to take humans to the surface of the Moon — roughly $2.4 billion short of what the agency requested. The shortfall threatens to delay NASA’s ambitious plan of landing the first woman on the Moon by 2024.

    Today, the Senate Appropriations Committee released 12 funding bills for next year, laying out proposed budgets for the federal government. The newly released legislation would allocate a total of $23.5 billion to NASA, an increase over last year’s NASA budget but roughy $1.75 billion less than the $25.2 billion the administration had asked for.

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  • Loren Grush

    Nov 9, 2020

    Loren Grush

    NASA administrator says he plans to leave position under Biden administration

    NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine says he plans to leave his position at the space agency under the new Joe Biden administration, even if he’s asked to stay, according to an interview he did with Aviation Week. Bridenstine said the decision would be to ensure NASA has the right leader who connects with the new president.

    “What you need is somebody who has a close relationship with the president of the United States,” Bridenstine told Aviation Week. “You need somebody who is trusted by the administration…. including the OMB [Office of Management and Budget], the National Space Council and the National Security Council, and I think that I would not be the right person for that in a new administration.”

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  • Loren Grush

    Oct 26, 2020

    Loren Grush

    Water ice on the Moon may be easier to reach than we thought, new studies claim

    PANAMA-MOON-MARS
    Photo by LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images

    New observations of the Moon reveal that lunar water may be more accessible than originally thought. The new data is particularly exciting for NASA, which hopes to leverage the Moon’s resources — notably water ice embedded in the soil — to help future astronauts live and work on the lunar surface.

    In one study, researchers detected water directly on the lunar surface, finding the molecule on areas of the Moon lit by the Sun. A second study speculates that water ice might be trapped in tiny pockets or small craters littered all over the Moon’s surface, making water potentially more abundant and more accessible than we could have imagined. The two studies were published today in the journal Nature.

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  • Loren Grush

    Oct 13, 2020

    Loren Grush

    US and seven other countries sign NASA’s Artemis Accords to set rules for exploring the Moon

    An artistic rendering of humans exploring the Moon.
    An artistic rendering of humans exploring the Moon.
    Image: NASA

    Today, NASA announced that eight countries — including the United States — have signed an international agreement known as the Artemis Accords, forming what NASA calls a broad and diverse coalition of nations committed to standardized lunar exploration.

    NASA announced its intention to create the Artemis Accords back in May, after working with the US State Department and the National Space Council to come up with a draft set of rules for exploring the Moon. The document’s name refers to NASA’s Artemis program, an ambitious initiative that aims to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon. NASA hopes to partner with multiple countries for the program, and the agency created the Artemis Accords to ensure that other nations could agree on best practices for sending robots and people to the lunar surface.

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  • Loren Grush

    Oct 12, 2020

    Loren Grush

    Head of Russian space program calls for more international cooperation in NASA’s Moon plans

    Vostochny Cosmodrome under construction in Amur Region, Russia
    Dmitry Rogozin
    Photo by Alexander Ryumin\TASS via Getty Images

    The head of Russia’s space program said today that NASA’s plans to send people back to the Moon are “too US-centric” for Russia to participate. He has been critical of the program in the past and now says that Russia would only be open to participating if the Moon plans were more focused on international cooperation.

    “The most important thing here would be to base this program on the principles of international cooperation that we’ve all used” to fly the ISS, Dmitry Rogozin, the director-general of Roscosmos, said through a translator during a virtual press conference at the International Astronautical Congress. He added: “If we could get back to considering making these principles as the foundation of the program, then Roscosmos could also consider its participation.”

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  • Loren Grush

    Sep 10, 2020

    Loren Grush

    NASA wants to buy Moon rocks from private companies

    An artistic rendering of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, contracted to take payloads to the Moon for NASA’s CLPS program.
    An artistic rendering of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, contracted to take payloads to the Moon for NASA’s CLPS program.
    Image: Astrobotic

    NASA is officially in the market for Moon rocks — and it’s willing to pay any company that’s capable of scooping them up.

    Today, the space agency is putting out a call for proposals from companies, challenging them to snag small samples of rocks on the Moon’s surface. The companies will have to prove that they have collected lunar samples in some kind of small container by sending pictures and data to NASA. If satisfied, NASA pledges to purchase the samples for between $15,000 and $25,000. Eventually, NASA will retrieve the rock samples and bring them back to Earth.

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  • Loren Grush

    Jul 7, 2020

    Loren Grush

    House budget bill denies major increases for NASA to fund ambitious Moon program

    An artistic rendering of astronauts on the Moon, mining resources.
    An artistic rendering of astronauts on the Moon, mining resources.
    Image: NASA

    House appropriators don’t intend to substantially increase NASA’s budget, potentially jeopardizing the agency’s plans of sending astronauts back to the Moon by 2024.

    Today, the House Appropriations Committee released its latest funding bill for fiscal year 2021, detailing the budgets for all commerce, justice, and science agencies in the US. The bill would give NASA a total budget of $22.63 billion for next year, the same amount the agency received for 2020. However, it’s nearly $3 billion less than the $25.2 billion the Trump administration called for in the president’s budget request — a hefty amount intended to fund an ambitious lunar return.

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  • Loren Grush

    Jun 25, 2020

    Loren Grush

    NASA wants to hear your ideas for engineering the best toilet to use on the Moon

    When NASA sends astronauts back to the Moon, they’ll need a place to go to the bathroom when they reach the lunar surface. And in order to create the best Moon toilet the Solar System has to offer, NASA wants to hear from members of the public who might have ideas on the best way to manufacture an easy-to-use lunar restroom.

    Today, NASA is announcing the “Lunar Loo Challenge,” a competition in partnership with HeroX to come up with the best space toilet for the agency’s future human lunar lander. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024, the lander will take astronauts from lunar orbit down to the Moon’s surface. That means the restroom on board has to be versatile: it will need to work in orbit, where the astronauts will be weightless, and also when astronauts are experiencing one-sixth of Earth’s gravity on the lunar surface. And without much gravity, things can get a little messy if you don’t prepare.

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  • Loren Grush

    May 15, 2020

    Loren Grush

    NASA announces international Artemis Accords to standardize how to explore the Moon

    Today, NASA announced the creation of the Artemis Accords, a new set of standards on how to explore the Moon. The agency hopes that other countries will agree to the terms, which lay out how humanity will act on the Moon, including how to mine resources from the lunar surface and ways to protect heritage Apollo sites.

    The Artemis Accords, first reported by Reuters, are a reference to NASA’s Artemis program, an initiative to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has been clear that he wants the agency’s international partners to work with NASA to create a sustainable presence on and around the lunar surface. However, NASA wants everyone to be on the same page in how they’ll behave when they reach the Moon.

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  • Loren Grush

    Apr 30, 2020

    Loren Grush

    NASA picks SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to create landers to take humans to the Moon

    NASA has chosen SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to design and build three lunar landing systems that can take humans to the surface of the Moon. The three companies will work on their designs over the next year, and eventually, NASA will select one lander to take the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface.

    These landers are a critical part of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s initiative to send humans back to the Moon by 2024. Last year, Vice President Mike Pence challenged NASA to accelerate its plans to return to the Moon, and NASA has been working hard to make that happen. For the last decade, NASA has been developing a giant deep-space rocket, known as the Space Launch System, and a crew capsule called Orion to take people into deep space. The biggest missing piece of the equation was a lander to take humans down to the Moon.

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  • Loren Grush

    Feb 10, 2020

    Loren Grush

    The Trump administration calls for big budget increases for NASA to fund Moon-to-Mars program

    The core of NASA’s Space Launch System, which was recently completed earlier this year
    The core of NASA’s Space Launch System, which was recently completed earlier this year
    Image: NASA

    President Trump is requesting a 12 percent increase to NASA’s budget for next year to help ensure the agency sends humans back to the surface of the Moon by 2024. The administration’s proposed budget, released today, provides NASA with $25.2 billion for fiscal year 2021, a major increase over the $22.6 billion the agency received this year.

    If enacted as is, the budget would be the largest financial bump the space agency has received in decades. Nearly half of the budget — $12.3 billion — would go toward funding NASA’s Artemis program, the ambitious plan to put the first woman on the lunar surface within the next five years. Nearly $3.4 billion of that would be invested in developing new commercial landers to take humans to and from the lunar surface, while more than $700 million would go toward funding activities on the Moon.

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  • Loren Grush

    Jan 22, 2020

    Loren Grush

    NASA administrator on the year ahead: ‘A lot of things have to go right’

    NASA has a big to-do list for 2020, as the agency continues to build its Artemis program with the goal of sending the first woman to the Moon by 2024. This year, NASA also hopes to start launching its astronauts from the US again, after nearly a decade of launching them to space on Russian vehicles. It’s still unclear if NASA will meet all the ambitious deadlines it has set for itself.

    Yet, the agency has already started off this year strong. This weekend, SpaceX launched a crucial flight test for NASA that could pave the way for the company to start launching the space agency’s astronauts sometime this year. That puts NASA in a good starting position, though there’s still quite a lot of work to be done.

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  • Loren Grush

    Jul 30, 2019

    Loren Grush

    NASA to help SpaceX, Blue Origin, and more develop technologies for Moon and Mars travel

    As NASA forges ahead to the Moon — and eventually to Mars — the agency is hoping to get some help from the commercial space industry. Today, NASA announced new partnerships with various aerospace organizations, aimed at advancing technologies related to landing on other planets, navigating the lunar surface, transferring propellant in space, and more — all of which could be critical for future missions.

    Thirteen companies now hold a total of 19 partnerships with NASA through the agency’s Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity initiative, or ACO. In October, NASA put out a call for proposals from the industry, asking them to detail different technologies they’d like to develop through the program. Now, the companies that have been selected will be given expertise and resources from various NASA centers to help mature these space technologies — at no cost to the companies themselves.

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  • Loren Grush

    Jul 29, 2019

    Loren Grush

    This company says it has a lunar space suit that will be ready for NASA’s 2024 Moon mission

    Collins Aerospace’s Next Generation Space Suit system
    Collins Aerospace’s Next Generation Space Suit system
    Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge

    NASA is hyper focused on sending humans to the lunar surface by 2024, and those astronauts are going to need space suits to pull off the job — suits that the space agency currently doesn’t have. Now one company, with decades of experience making space suits for NASA, says it has an ensemble that could be ready by the agency’s ambitious deadline.

    Last week, Collins Aerospace unveiled a prototype of the Next Generation Space Suit system which could be used for excursions on the surface of the Moon. On Thursday, July 25th, a model demonstrated the ease of walking in the suit by trotting around the lobby of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC and climbing up and down a few steps. The company claims that the suit is about half the weight of the original Apollo space suits. It’s supposed to be much more flexible, too, capable of fitting a wide range of body types from small Moon walkers to those well over six feet tall.

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  • Loren Grush

    Jul 19, 2019

    Loren Grush

    Trump repeatedly asks NASA administrator why we can’t go straight to Mars

    President Trump And First Lady Melania Commemorate The 50th Anniversary Of The Apollo 11 Moon Landing
    Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    On Friday, President Trump commemorated the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 with a photo opportunity in the Oval Office, where he spent a lot of time questioning his administration’s own policy for deep space human exploration. Surrounded by NASA officials, Moon walkers, and lawmakers, Trump repeatedly asked NASA’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine, why astronauts couldn’t go straight to Mars instead of going to the Moon first.

    “To get to Mars, you have to land on the Moon, they say,” Trump asked Bridenstine, according to a recording provided by Politico. “Any way of going directly without landing on the Moon? Is that a possibility?”

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  • Loren Grush

    Jul 18, 2019

    Loren Grush

    NASA’s daunting to-do list for sending people back to the Moon

    A half-century after landing the first humans on the Moon, NASA is looking to put people back on the lunar surface, but this time the agency has an even more ambitious deadline to meet. The goal is to send humans back to the Moon by 2024, a mere five years from now. NASA has a whole lot more hardware to develop this time — which leaves many wondering if such an extremely ambitious lunar return can be done.

    NASA’s plan to return to the Moon is called Artemis, and like Apollo, the program requires a giant rocket as well as landers to take people to the lunar surface. Perhaps the biggest thing that sets Artemis apart from the Apollo program is that this time, the emphasis is on sustainability. Rather than just send people to walk around the Moon for a few hours, NASA wants to build some kind of sustainable outpost near the lunar surface for the foreseeable future. That’s why Artemis includes a separate component dubbed the Gateway — a space station meant to be built in orbit around the Moon. Instead of people traveling directly to the lunar surface from Earth, they’d travel to the Gateway first and then travel in landers to the Moon.

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  • Loren Grush

    Jul 16, 2019

    Loren Grush

    Apollo was NASA’s biggest win — but its legacy is holding the agency back

    Ever since Apollo 11 carried the first people to the Moon, NASA has vowed that it will surpass its most historic achievement — either by returning to the Moon or by sending people to Mars. But after half a century, NASA hasn’t managed to turn their grand visions into reality, and it’s possible the agency’s most prized accomplishment, the Apollo program, may be partially to blame for the stall.

    “There are few things in life that we could look back on and say that have regressed since 1969,” Mark Sirangelo, who recently helped to lead NASA’s Moon return plans before departing in May, tells The Verge. “And I could say, very objectively, that human spaceflight in America has gone backwards.”

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