NASA readies first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years

NASA mission experts said on Sunday (March 29) they "are ready" for the Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission of it's multi-billion-dollar Artemis program.

"Our flight systems are ready. The ground systems are ready. Our launch and operations teams are ready. And our flight operations team in Houston are also ready," acting associate administrator Lori Glaze told media on Sunday.

The four astronauts selected for NASA's Artemis II mission arrived in Florida on Friday (March 27), entering the final phase of preparations for the first crewed journey toward the Moon in more than five decades.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen hopped out of Northrop T-38 jets that they flew from Houston, Texas, to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where they could launch to space as soon as April 1 aboard NASA's towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

They will ride inside an Orion crew capsule built to carry humans into deep space. The roughly 10-day mission will send the crew on a high-speed loop around the Moon and back.

While it 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.

Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, Northrop Grumman builds the rocket's solid-fuel boosters, and Lockheed Martin produces the Orion spacecraft.

The crew has spent more than two years training for the mission since being named in 2023. They have been in standard preflight quarantine at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston since March 18 and are scheduled to move into NASA's Astronaut Crew Quarters in Florida ahead of launch.

Glover, the mission's pilot, will become the first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon's vicinity. Koch will be the first woman to do so, while Hansen will be the first non-American astronaut to go beyond low Earth orbit.

All of the crew members except Hansen have previously been in space. Wiseman, the mission commander, told reporters last year that the crew were prepared for all eventualities.

Production: Eva Weininger/Reuters