NASA says it is ready to send astronauts toward the Moon for the first time in more than half a century.
Officials said Sunday that preparations for Artemis II are nearing completion following months of testing and final reviews. This is the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis program,
“We are getting very, very close and we are ready,” acting associate administrator Lori Glaze told reporters. “Our flight systems are ready. The ground systems are ready. Our launch and operations teams are ready.”
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The four astronauts assigned to the mission arrived in Florida on Friday to begin final preparations ahead of a launch that could take place as soon as April 1 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
They will fly aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket inside an Orion crew capsule on a roughly 10‑day mission that will send them on a high‑speed loop around the Moon and back. While Artemis II will not attempt a lunar landing, the mission will take astronauts farther from Earth than any previous human spaceflight and test key systems needed for future Moon missions.NASA officials said recent testing of launch, spacecraft and ground systems has gone smoothly.
Shawn Quinn, a program manager, said checks of hydrogen systems and communications between the rocket and spacecraft were successful and that the launch countdown is scheduled to begin Monday afternoon, pending weather later in the week.
“At this point, we can safely say the crew’s ready, the rocket’s ready, the spaceship’s ready and the ground systems are ready,” Quinn said.
Officials also said teams are completing final international medical agreements needed in the event of an emergency landing outside the United States. Glaze said those arrangements were expected to be finalized by Monday.
The Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon and establish a long‑term presence there. Boeing is the prime contractor for the Space Launch System core stage, Northrop Grumman builds the rocket’s solid‑fuel boosters and Lockheed Martin produces the Orion spacecraft.
Glover will become the first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon’s vicinity, Koch the first woman and Hansen the first non‑American astronaut to go beyond low Earth orbit.
