NASA plans to send the mission of the moon inhabited by February 2026 | Space News

The ARTEMIS II crew will not land on the moon, but it will lay the foundation for the first tasks of the Mars.

NASA may return to the moon months sooner than he was originally planned, as the agency announced that the first flight in Artemis can take the flight around the moon and return early in February.

The ARTEMIS program of the Space Agency is the leading effort by the United States to return human beings to the moon, and it is a series of billions of dollars in value that competes with a similar effort by China, which aims to drop the astronaut in 2030.

On the first ARTEMIS mission, a spacecraft did not available around the moon and return in November 2022.

goal Artemis II Mission, a 10 -day journey around the moon and the return, is to “explore the moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits and build the basis for the first tasks that were made to Mars,” according to NASA.

The ARTEMIS II crew will not fall on the moon, but it will be the first to travel beyond the low Earth’s orbit since 1972, BBC mentioned.

The mission was originally planned for April, but it can be transferred to February.

“We have a seat in the front row of history,” Lakissha Hawkins, NASA’s Acting Deputy Assistant, told a news conference on Tuesday. “The launch window can open early in February 5, but we want to emphasize that safety is our top priority.”

Artemis II is supposed to be a test for the most ambitious agency’s task, ARTEMIS III, which is currently planned for 2027, and will include the Moon Lander variable of the Spacex missile. The goal of Artemis III is to land on the moon.

ARTEMIS II includes a NASA space launch system and a Orion capsule. The Orion capsule will ride over the 98 -meter (322 -feet) giant SLS missile (322 feet) from the Kennedy Space Center in NASA in Florida, the first time that the spacecraft dubious fly with humans.

The most famous moon journey in NASA has occurred for more than 50 years, when Neil Armstrong He became the first person to put his foot on the surface of the moon in 1969 while he was behaving as the commander of Apollo 11.