NASA announced Tuesday that the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century could launch as early as February 2025, moving up the timeline for the landmark Artemis II mission.
The 10-day flight will send four astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — on a journey around the far side of the Moon before returning to Earth. It will be the first crewed mission beyond low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
“The launch window could open as early as February 5, but we want to emphasise that safety is our top priority,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, a deputy associate administrator at NASA. “Together we will have a front row seat to history.”
The Artemis II crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. They will ride aboard Orion, a crew capsule designed for deep space exploration, carried into orbit by NASA’s powerful Space Launch System.
Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight launched in 2022, successfully orbited the Moon and returned to Earth, though engineers had to address heat shield issues discovered during re-entry. NASA officials say those problems have been resolved.
The upcoming mission will study how deep space travel affects the human body, with medical samples collected before and after the flight. The astronauts are scheduled to splash down off the coast of California upon their return.
NASA views Artemis II as a crucial step toward Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface — including the first woman and first non-white astronaut — no earlier than 2027. That timeline depends in part on the readiness of SpaceX’s Starship, the vehicle slated to ferry crews from lunar orbit to the surface.
Since Apollo 17’s crew returned home 240,000 miles from the Moon, astronauts have remained within Earth’s neighborhood, venturing no farther than 875 miles into space. The Artemis program marks a new chapter in extending human presence deeper into the solar system.
