A moon spacecraft is one step closer to flying with humans on board in 2025.
The Orion spacecraft, which will carry four astronauts around the moon on the Artemis 2 mission, recently reentered an altitude chamber at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Orion, which is built by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, will do more testing in space-like conditions to ensure it is ready for liftoff, NASA officials stated on Tuesday (Nov. 12). That mission could occur as soon as September 2025.
The Artemis 2 astronauts are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to do so) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American).
The quartet will be the first people to fly to lunar realms since the three astronauts of Apollo 17 in 1972, which landed on the moon. Artemis 2's mission calls for Orion to loop around the moon to prepare for future landings, but not to touch down itself.
Artemis 2 was initially slotted for a December 2024 liftoff, but that schedule was delayed in January 2024. NASA said several engineering issues needed to be resolved, most especially with the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft. It's a developmental mission, however, so the schedule is always subject to changes as the hardware matures.
Artemis 2 will be the first NASA-led Artemis program mission with humans on board. The uncrewed Artemis 1 flew to lunar orbit and back in 2022. NASA plans a long-term presence on the moon starting with Artemis 3, which will lift off in 2026 or so and use SpaceX's Starship spacecraft to touch down.
For now, NASA is expected to use its Space Launch System megarocket for all Artemis missions, but space policy under the incoming Donald Trump presidential administration — which includes high-level advice from SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk — may change the moon rocket to SpaceX's Starship. Starship is under development, with five test flights under its belt so far. The sixth is scheduled for Nov. 18.
