NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule, which could soon carry four astronauts on a historic lunar mission, are set to make the hour-long journey from the agency’s Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday.
The event, known as a rollout, marks the start of an unprecedented mission that could set a new record for the longest distance from Earth ever traveled by humans, currently held by Apollo 13.
The 10-day mission is expected to begin as early as February 6 and will take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen around the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.
A crew of four will travel to the far side of the moon. It will also make history for its diversity, making it the first journey beyond low Earth orbit by a person of colour, a woman and a Canadian astronaut.
Why doesn’t Artemis II land on the lunar surface?
Despite the spacecraft traveling so close to the Moon’s vicinity, the crew members will not land on the lunar surface.
“The short answer is it doesn’t have the capability. This is not a lunar lander,” Patty Casas Horn, NASA’s deputy chief for mission analysis and integrated assessment, told CNN.
The mission will be accomplished using the Orion capsule, which will take the astronauts around the Moon, and then the SLS rocket will lift Orion into Earth orbit before the crew continues deeper into space.
NASA’s priorities for Artemis II are clear, Horn said, adding that there is a lot of work to do without touching the lunar surface. She also outlined that the safety and health of the crew comes first, which includes returning the astronauts home. Vehicle safety and health are secondary, and mission objectives such as testing navigation, propulsion and other on-board systems come second.
Can the mission become a record?
The current record for the longest distance ever traveled by humans from Earth is 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers), set by Apollo 13 in 1970. Artemis I had already covered this distance, but without a crew on board.
Artemis I, the program’s 25-day unmanned test mission, launched in November 2022 and successfully orbited the Moon. NASA therefore believes that Artemis II could now surpass Apollo 13’s record with humans on board, although the result is not guaranteed, according to Horn.
“It depends on when we’re flying. The trajectory is constantly changing because it’s optimized for the best use of propulsion,” she told the news channel. NASA currently has several possible flights for Artemis II, starting on February 6 and ending on April 30, 2026.
The mission will begin two orbits around Earth, before beginning translunar injection — a maneuver that takes the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and toward the moon — about 26 hours into the flight, Horn noted.
By not entering lunar orbit, the mission avoids any complexity. This process would allow crew members to focus only on other critical tasks as there is no need to pilot the spacecraft.