Artemis II prepares to blast off for first lunar mission with crew of astronauts in over fifty years

Record ID: 2371335

  • Title: Artemis II prepares to blast off for first lunar mission with crew of astronauts in over fifty years
  • Date: 30th March 2026
  • Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (RECENT - MARCH 26, 2026) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTING ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE EXPLORATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT MISSION DIRECTORATE AT NASA, LORI GLAZE, SAYING: “And then we come back to Earth. And when we come back to Earth, the crew will re-enter the atmosphere and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego
  • Embargoed:
  • Keywords: Artemis Artemis II Dr. Margaret Weitekamp Lori Glaze Mars NASA moon
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: US
  • Topics: North America,Science,Space Exploration
  • Reuters ID: LVA00A701624032026RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: NASA is preparing to launch the first crew of astronauts toward the moon in over 53 years with its second Artemis mission, a key test flight in humanity's broader lunar return as the U.S. races to reassert leadership in space amid growing competition from China.
    Three U.S. astronauts and a Canadian astronaut are due for liftoff aboard NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket as soon as Wednesday (April 01) for a 10-day test mission swinging around the moon and back, a winding journey taking them deeper into space than humans have ever gone before.
    The mission is the first crewed test flight in NASA's multibillion-dollar Artemis program, the flagship U.S. effort to put humans back on the moon this decade. Not since Apollo 17 in 1972 have humans touched down on the moon's surface, a tricky feat NASA aims to repeat in 2028 at the rugged lunar south pole.
    NASA’s Lori Glaze told Reuters that Orion will spend 24 hours in Earth orbit after launch to test the craft’s environmental controls and life support systems.
    “We want to test those out in Earth orbit before we make the commitment to go to the moon,” Glaze, the Acting Associate Administrator for the Explorations Development Mission Directorate said. “
    If all goes well Orion will do what is called a “Translunar Injection Burn” to “fire the engines and… head off on a trajectory to the moon,” Glaze said. “It's a special trajectory that when we go out to the moon, the moon's gravity is going to pull us and have us go around the moon and then it'll sling us back towards Earth,” she added.
    While Artemis II will not attempt a moon landing, it will send astronauts farther from Earth than any previous human spaceflight, testing the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems, navigation, communications and heat shield performance.
    The Artemis II mission will pose a greater test of NASA's Orion capsule and SLS, which launched on a similar mission without crew in 2022. The astronauts on board will test critical life-support systems, crew interfaces, navigation and communications before NASA proceeds with more complex missions in the following years.
    The U.S. is the only country to have landed humans on another celestial body with its six lunar landings of the Apollo program, driven by competition with the former Soviet Union. China, a formidable technological rival to the U.S., has made steady progress in its own moon program in recent years with a streak of robotic lunar landings and a 2030 goal to put its own crew on the surface.
    NASA’s Lori Glaze said they are keenly aware of the lunar ambitions of countries like China and India.
    “We definitely want to make sure that… we will get there first and we're going to stay this time,” she said.
    The four astronauts selected for NASA's Artemis II mission arrived in Florida on Friday (March 27), entering the final phase of preparations for their 10-day journey to the moon and back.
    NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to launch from Kennedy Space Center.
    Through a series of increasingly advanced Artemis missions extending into the next decade, the U.S. aims to set the precedent for how other countries will operate and coexist on the moon's surface, a stage of national power where countries and companies can exploit rocky lunar resources and practice for much harder missions to Mars.
    Artemis III, planned for 2027, will involve the Orion capsule docking in Earth's orbit with NASA's two lunar landers - the Blue Moon system from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Starship from Elon Musk's SpaceX. The delicate tag-up will demonstrate how the landers will pick up astronauts before landing on the moon's surface.
    That mission was added to the program in February by NASA's new administrator Jared Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut who has more broadly shaken up the program with new objectives. His decision pushed the program's first crewed lunar landing to Artemis IV, which is scheduled for early 2028.
    (Production: Alexandra Sarabia; Julio-Cesar Chavez; Ashraf Fahim)
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