Blog

May 23, 2026 [LINK / comment]

Artemis II: Humans go back to the moon, (almost)!

On Wednesday, April 1st (no fooling), four astronauts -- three Americans* and one Canadian** -- were launched from Cape Canaveral to begin the historic and quite successful Artemis II mission. It was the first manned mission relying upon the Space Launch System (SLS), consisting of a large liquid-fueled rocket with two solid-fuel boosters strapped to the side, just like how the Space Shuttles were launched. It has even greater total thrust than the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo program. This was also the first time that NASA's Orion space capsule had flown with humans aboard.

The objective of the Artemis II mission was quite similar to that of Apollo 8, when men first circled the moon in December 1968 as a preliminary step toward an actual landing. Artemis II had a different flight trajectory, however: It took a slower, more indirect approach to the moon, beginning with a maneuver into a highly elliptical orbit during which the Orion spacecraft's various systems were checked out. After about four days in transit it simply looped around moon in a broad arc, rather than entering lunar orbit. (You can see a nice map showing all the phases of the Artemis II mission at www.nasa.gov.) Whereas the Apollo missions took about two and a half days to get to the moon, with a total mission lengths ranging between six and eleven days, the Artemis II mission lasted about nine days. On April 10 the four astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, and the mission was a complete success. See NASA.gov.

* Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch
** Jeremy Hansen
I still remember most of the names of the Apollo 8 crew (Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders), as well as the Apollo 11 crew (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins) from when I was a teenage space enthusiast. Lovell gained fame during the Apollo 13 mission, which nearly ended in disaster and was later the subject of a movie starring Tom Hanks and .

Background: recent space developments

NASA's Orion spacecraft has room for four astronauts, compared to three in the Apollo capsules. After the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, eight full years elapsed without any manned space missions launched from the United States. (During that period and since then, a number of American astronauts have flown to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz space capsules.) Then in 2020, the first Dragon capsule (with two astronauts) was launched into orbit aboard the SpaceX Falcon-9 booster. The Dragon capsule has room for four. This was the fruition of NASA's post-Shuttle policy of collaborating with private enterprises, aimed at economizing via the good old-fashioned incentive of capitalist competition. Since 2022 there have been nine SpaceX "Crew" missions run by NASA (two per year, numbered 4-12), as well as four SpaceX "Axiom" missions (numbered 1-4), financed by private capital. There was also the "Fram2" mission in 2025, financed by Chinese-[born] entrepreneur Chun Wang. All those "Crew," "Axiom," and "Fram" missions use the same combination of a Falcon-9 booster with a Dragon capsule. Elon Musk's SpaceX Corporation, which is expected to go public via sales of common stock in the next few months, is vying with Jeff Bezos's Blue Origins Corporation and with the Boeing Corporation.

In June 2024, after repeated delays due to a leak of helium in the fuel system, the first crewed Boeing Starliner capsule was launched via an Atlas V rocket, and it soon docked with the International Space Station. (The Atlas V rocket is derived from the Atlas rocket used in the Mercury space program of the early 1960s, but production has ceased because it relies on a Russian-made engine, and relations with Russia have soured in recent years.) But after another helium was detected, it was decided to have the crew stay aboard the ISS until a Crew Dragon capsule became available for a safe return to earth, which did not happen until March 2025. Since then the future of the Boeing Starliner capsule for use in crewed space missions has been in doubt.

Yesterday (May 22) there was another step forward toward the ultimate goal of landing men and women on the moon in 2028. The SpaceX Starship "Version 3" with the Super Heavy booster successfully launched from Texas, and about an hour later the Starship (sans booster) landed in the Indian Ocean. It apparently hit the water harder than expected and burst into a huge cloud of flames. See USA Today via Apple News. The Super Heavy booster stage (which is designed to be reusable) was first launched from the SpaceX "Starbase" complex at the southern tip of Texas on April 20, 2023. Several of the 33 clustered rocket engines failed, however, and the mission self-destructed about four minutes into the flight. The SpaceX Starship [was first launched in April 2023 but self-destructed due to a malfunction, and several attempts since then ended the same way. The fourth test flight in June 2024 succeeded in reaching earth orbit, re-entering the earth's atmosphere, and then landing at the Starbase launch tower equipped with giant "grips."]

NASA's (confusing) plans for a moon landing

SpaceX's Starship was designed explicitly with several distinct mission objectives in mind, one of them being to land [humans and/or cargo] on the moon: [the "Starship Human Landing System (HLS)." Another would be to carry up to 100 passengers to Mars, in the far-off future. Thus far, however, there have been no flights of a Starship with human crews.] Unlike the relatively squat profile of the Apollo lunar module and various unmanned lunar landing vehicles, Starship is very tall (about 170 feet) and narrow, and would require a flat surface to land safely. Given the small margin for error, and the possibility that the whole thing could simply tip over, it seems more likely that Starship will be used to transport supplies and habitation modules to the moon, rather than the astronauts themselves. It requires a complicated refueling process in order to be able to land and then return to the earth, something that has never been done in space.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin company is developing the "Blue Moon Mark-1" lunar lander, but it too is designed primarily to provide supplies and equipment for a future lunar base. It would be launched by the the New Glenn rocket, which is also under development. (See blueorigin.com.) NASA is planning the Artemis III mission for next year as a way to test docking between the Orion capsule and the SpaceX Starship and/or Blue Moon Mark-1 lunar lander. One of those systems will presumably be adapted to actually carry astronauts to the surface of the moon, but the details remain murky. See NASA.gov.

The reason I described the specific phases of the Artemis II and SpaceX Starship / Super Heavy booster missions was to clear up the many lingering questions that many people have. The Artemis program stands in sharp contrast to the Apollo program in the late 1960s, when NASA provided full information on exactly what it was doing. About all we know for sure is that NASA is planning a series missions to the Moon's South Pole, where a substantial quantity of ice is believed to exist. Given the multiple uncertainties about the details of the planned lunar landing, 2028 seems like an unduly ambitious target to me. The possibility that President Trump would want this mission to be completed by the end of his term adds a political dimension to an already-complicated technical problem.

Space race with China?

China's space program remains shrouded in mystery, but it is believed that they intend to land humans on the moon by 2030. Certain technical hurdles must first be overcome, however. China launched its first man into space, Yang Liwei, on October 5, 2003, on the Shenzhou 5 mission. (This was about nine months after the U.S. space shuttle Columbia burned upon re-entry into earth's atmosphere due to damage to its heat shield during launch.) Altogether, China has launched 16 successful crewed missions, two per year since 2021. [] China has [built] its own series of space stations, and unlike Russia is not a partner in the International Space Station. (I saw the ISS passing almost directly overhead last Wednesday night, after learning about it on a local weather program. It was going from northwest to southeast.) [Evidently, China is partnering with Russia in its plans to land humans on the moon and build a permanent base near the lunar south pole. It will thus be an interesting race to the moon between the United States and a Chinese-Russian alliance, with a strong parallel to the contemporary geopolitical rivalry among the three great powers.]

Space missions page update

While the future remains very uncertain, the past and present of human space exploration are clear. Accordingly, the Space missions page has been updated for the first time in two years. (It lists a variety of print and online sources, some of which I consulted while writing this blog piece.) Among the corrections to previous entries, I removed the Tianzhou Chinese missions, since they are unmanned (or uncrewed, in modern parlance) missions, delivering cargo to China's Tiangong-3 space station.

NOTE: Corrections [in brackets] were made one day after the original post.