NASA's Artemis II to Return to Moon in Bet on Agency's Future

Bloomberg's Loren Grush said that NASA's Artemis II mission to get back to the moon is aimed at being a 'proving ground' for potential missions to Mars as the agency prepares to launch Wednesday. She said that NASA hopes to take the lessons learned on the moon and use them to figure out the challenges of living on a surface much farther away. Grush also weighed in on the stakes surrounding NASA's focus on the moon, as the agency tries to prove its worth amid budget concerns and the private space race.

American astronauts last set foot on the moon in 1972. More than half a century later, NASA is preparing to take a big step toward returning.

As soon as April 1, the US space agency is expected to launch a mission called Artemis II from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. It will test the Space Launch System rocket, built by Boeing Co., and the Orion crew capsule, made by Lockheed Martin Corp., which together are taller than the Statue of Liberty. Four astronauts will pack into Orion for a trip around the moon and back.

“You’re putting humans on this vehicle for the first time, and that’s always a big deal,” said Phil McAlister, NASA’s former director of commercial space. NASA was driving to launch Artemis II as early as February, but technical issues pushed the timeline back.

If successful, the voyage will help clear the way for astronauts, in maybe two years’ time, to again walk where Neil Armstrong made one giant leap. Yet a lot has to go right — and a lot of money will be spent — before that can happen.

Artemis was supposed to revive the purpose-driven spirit that defined the Apollo missions. Instead, it has become a patchwork quilt, with vehicles that have suffered from delays and cost overruns. The first flight of the Artemis vehicles was planned for 2017, but was pushed back five years. To speed up work and instill greater cost discipline, NASA tried different structures for its contracts for landers and spacesuits, but the new approach hasn’t necessarily made development move more quickly. NASA astronauts are poised to lift off Wednesday on a 10-day journey that will slingshot them around the moon, marking humanity’s return to the lunar vicinity for the first time in more than half a century.

The crew’s Lockheed Martin Corp.-built Orion capsule, perched atop the Boeing Co.-made Space Launch System rocket, is set to launch at 6:24 p.m. local time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission is a crucial, in-space dress rehearsal for the long-delayed SLS rocket and Orion capsule, and marks the biggest milestone yet in NASA’s multi-year Artemis campaign to land humans on the moon as soon as 2028.

If the mission launches on schedule, the four-person crew will travel farther in space than anyone in history. The Artemis voyages will attempt to repeat and then leapfrog feats achieved during the historic Apollo program that landed Neil Armstrong and 11 other men on the lunar surface in the 1960s and 1970s.

With Artemis — named after the twin goddess of Apollo — NASA aims to stay on the moon long-term. President Donald Trump’s NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, has laid out a decade-long $30-billion plan to set up a base on the moon where astronauts can live and work.

Isaacman has also sped through a significant makeover of the overall mission, including adding a test mission in 2027 that will send a crew to dock with one of the lunar landers being built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

“America will never again give up the moon,” Isaacman said earlier this month when he unveiled the moon base plans.

Subscribe Now: Business of Space newsletter, delivering the inside stories of investments beyond Earth, from satellite networks to moon landings.

The crew will spend roughly four days traveling to the lunar vicinity, where they will swing behind the moon’s far side — a vantage that is never seen from Earth. They are slated to perform a flyby of the lunar surface on April 6.

--------

Watch Bloomberg Radio LIVE on YouTube

Weekdays 7am-6pm ET

Follow us on X

Subscribe to our Podcasts:

Bloomberg Daybreak

Bloomberg Surveillance

Bloomberg Intelligence

Balance of Power

Bloomberg Businessweek

Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app:

Apple CarPlay

Android Auto

Visit our YouTube channels:

Bloomberg Podcasts

Bloomberg Television

Bloomberg Originals