News media gather to view the NASA's Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft at Launch Pad 39B at sunrise at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Tuesday — AFP WASHINGTON, Mar 25 (AFP): More than half-a-century after the groundbreaking Apollo program's last crewed flight to the Moon, three men and one woman are preparing for a lunar journey set to turn a new page in American space exploration.
The long-delayed NASA mission dubbed Artemis II is slated to lift-off from Florida and venture to Earth's natural satellite as early as April 1.
They won't land but are instead on a mission to fly by, much as Apollo 8 did in 1968. Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glober and Christina Koch-along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen-will carry out the approximately 10-day trip.
The odyssey will mark a series of firsts: the first time a woman, a person of color and a non-American will venture on a Moon mission. It's also the inaugural crewed flight of NASA's new lunar rocket, dubbed SLS.
The mammoth orange-and-white rocket is designed to allow the United States to repeatedly return to the Moon in years to come, with the goal of establishing a permanent base that will offer a stepping stone for further exploration.
"We're going back to the Moon because it's the next step in our journey to Mars," said Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, on a NASA podcast.
The Artemis program-named in honor of Apollo's goddess twin-aims to test technologies needed to one day send humans to Mars, a far more distant journey.
That ambition presents an immense challenge-which is compounded by pressure to achieve it before China does. China is currently aiming to land humans on the Moon by 2030.
© 2026 - All Rights with The Financial Express
