Names | Exploration Mission-3 (2017–2019) |
---|---|
Mission type | Crewed lunar landing |
Operator | NASA |
Mission duration | ~30 days [1] |
Spacecraft properties | |
Spacecraft | Orion CM-004 Starship HLS |
Manufacturer |
|
Start of mission | |
Launch date | September 2026 (planned) [4] |
Rocket | Space Launch System Block 1 [5] |
Launch site | Kennedy Space Center, LC-39B |
End of mission | |
Landing site | Pacific Ocean (planned) |
Moon lander | |
Landing site | South polar region |
Artemis III is planned to be the first crewed Moon landing mission of the Artemis program and the first crewed flight of the Starship HLS lander. [6] Artemis III is planned to be the second crewed Artemis mission and the first American crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972. [7] In December 2023, the Government Accountability Office reported that the mission is not likely to occur before 2027; [8] as of January 2024, NASA officially expects Artemis III to launch no earlier than September 2026 due to issues with the valves in Orion's life support system. [4] [9]
In August 2023, due to delays in the development of Starship, NASA officials expressed an openness to flying Artemis III without a crewed landing. [10] [11] In this case, the mission may become a crewed visit to the Lunar Gateway. [12] In April 2024, it was reported that alternative mission options being internally evaluated by NASA include a test of docking between Orion and Starship HLS in low Earth orbit. [13]
The goal of Artemis III is to land a crew at the Moon's south polar region. [14] The mission would see two astronauts land on the surface of the Moon for a stay of about one week. [15] It is also intended to be the first mission to land a woman and a person of color on the Moon. [16] [17] While up to four astronauts would launch aboard Orion, only two would land on the surface aboard Starship HLS, with the others remaining aboard Orion. The two astronauts will conduct up to four spacewalks on the Moon's surface, performing a variety of scientific observations, including sampling water ice. Before the Artemis III landing, some additional equipment will be pre-positioned on the surface, including an unpressurized rover for astronauts to use during their lunar excursions. This rover will have the capability to be controlled remotely. Several permanently shadowed regions could be reached by short forays of 5 to 15 km (3.1 to 9.3 mi), well within the range of the rover. [18]
The Space Launch System is a super-heavy-lift launcher used to launch the Orion spacecraft from Earth to a trans-lunar orbit. This will be the final mission using the booster SLS Block 1, the design used for the first three missions. Afterward, from Artemis IV until Artemis VIII, missions will use SLS Block 1B, with a more capable Exploration Upper Stage, and a cargo hold to transport other payloads.
Orion is the crew transport vehicle used by all Artemis missions. It will transport the crew from Earth to lunar orbit, dock with Starship HLS, and return the crew to Earth.
After a multi-phase design effort, on 16 April 2021, NASA selected SpaceX to develop Starship HLS and deliver it to near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) prior to arrival of the crew for use on the Artemis III mission. The delivery requires that Starship HLS be refueled in Earth orbit before boosting to the NRHO, and this refueling requires a pre-positioned propellant depot in Earth orbit that is filled by multiple (at least 14 [19] ) tanker flights. [20] Two astronauts will transfer from Orion to Starship HLS, which will descend to the lunar surface and sustain them for several days before returning them to Orion. Following the return of the astronauts, Starship HLS will be disposed of by sending it into heliocentric orbit. [21]
Upon the December 2017 ratification of the Trump administration's Space Policy Directive 1, a crewed lunar campaign – later known as the Artemis program – using the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and a space station in lunar orbit was established. Originally billed as Exploration Mission-3 (EM-3), the goal of the mission was to send four astronauts into a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon and deliver the ESPRIT and U.S. Utilization Module to the lunar space station, known as the Gateway. [22]
By May 2019 however, ESPRIT and the U.S. Utilization Module – now called HALO – were re-manifested to fly separately on a commercial launch vehicle. Artemis III, as it was now billed, was repurposed to accelerate the first crewed lunar landing of the Artemis program by the end of 2024, with a profile that would have seen the Orion MPCV rendezvous with a minimal Gateway space station made up of only the Power and Propulsion Element and a small habitat/docking node with an attached commercially-procured lunar lander known as the Human Landing System (HLS). [23]
By early 2020, plans for Orion and the HLS to rendezvous with the Gateway were abandoned in favour of direct docking of Orion and HLS, and delivery of the Gateway after Artemis III. [24] [25]
On 10 August 2021, an Office of Inspector General audit reported a conclusion that the spacesuits would not be ready until April 2025 at the earliest, likely delaying the mission from the planned late 2024 launch date. [26] Axiom Space will design the space suits, with collaboration from fashion house Prada. [27]
On 9 November 2021, the Administrator of NASA, Bill Nelson, confirmed that Artemis III will launch no earlier than 2025. [28]
In June 2023, Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems development, said that launch would "probably" be no earlier than 2026. [29] [30] Later in December 2023, the GAO reported the mission was unlikely to occur before 2027. [8]
In January 2024, NASA officially delayed Artemis III to no earlier than September 2026. [4]
On its third test flight Starship reached its desired orbital trajectory for the first time on March 14, 2024.
In March 2024, NASA announced the scientific instruments to be included on the mission were a compact, autonomous seismometer suite called the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station, or LEMS. LEMS will characterize the regional structure of the Moon's crust and mantle to inform the development of lunar formation and evolution models. Another instrument is Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora, a.k.a. LEAF, which will investigate the impact of the lunar surface environment on space crops. The third instrument is the Lunar Dielectric Analyzer, or LDA, an internationally contributed payload that will measure the regolith's ability to propagate an electric field. [31]
The European Service Module for the mission was completed and delivered to NASA in September 2024. [32]
Human spaceflight programs have been conducted, started, or planned by multiple countries and companies. Until the 21st century, human spaceflight programs were sponsored exclusively by governments, through either the military or civilian space agencies. With the launch of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of human spaceflight programs – commercial human spaceflight – arrived. By the end of 2022, three countries and one private company (SpaceX) had successfully launched humans to Earth orbit, and two private companies had launched humans on a suborbital trajectory.
Dragon is a family of spacecraft developed and produced by American private space transportation company SpaceX.
NASA proposed several concept moonbases for achieving a permanent presence of humans on the Moon since the late 1950s. Research and exploration of the Moon have been a large focus of the organization since the Apollo program. NASA's peak budget was in 1964–1965, when it comprised 4% of all federal spending in service of the Apollo Moon landing project. Though lunar landings since the conclusion of the Apollo program in 1972 have ceased, interest in establishing a permanent habitation on the lunar surface or beyond low Earth orbit has remained steady. Recently, renewed interest in lunar landing has led to increased funding and project planning. NASA requested an increase in the 2020 budget of $1.6 billion, in order to make another crewed mission to the Moon under the Artemis program by 2025, followed by a sustained presence on the Moon by 2028. A crew was selected for the planned crewed mission, Artemis II, in April 2023.
Artemis II is a scheduled mission of the NASA-led Artemis program. It will use the second launch of the Space Launch System (SLS) and include the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft. The mission is scheduled for no earlier than September 2025. Four astronauts will perform a flyby of the Moon and return to Earth, becoming the first crew to travel beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. Artemis II will be the first crewed launch from Launch Complex 39B of the Kennedy Space Center since STS-116 in 2006.
The Lunar Gateway, or simply Gateway, is a space station which is planned to be assembled in orbit around the Moon. The Gateway is intended to serve as a communication hub, science laboratory, and habitation module for astronauts as part of the Artemis program. It is a multinational collaborative project: participants include NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). The Gateway is planned to be the first space station beyond low Earth orbit.
Blue Moon is a family of lunar landers and their associated infrastructure, intended to carry humans and cargo to the Moon, under development by a consortium led by Blue Origin and including Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics. Two versions of Blue Moon are under development: a robotic lander planned to land on the Moon in 2024, and a larger human lander planned to land a crew of four astronauts on the lunar surface for the NASA Artemis V mission in 2029.
This article documents expected notable spaceflight events during the 2020s.
Starship is a two-stage fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. As of July 2024, it is the most massive and powerful vehicle ever to fly. SpaceX has developed Starship with the intention of lowering launch costs using economies of scale. SpaceX aims to achieve this by reusing both rocket stages, increasing payload mass to orbit, returning both stages to be "caught" by the launch tower, increasing launch frequency, creating a mass-manufacturing pipeline and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's reusable launch system development program and plan to colonize Mars.
The Artemis program is a Moon exploration program led by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), formally established in 2017 via Space Policy Directive 1. It is intended to reestablish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The program's stated long-term goal is to establish a permanent base on the Moon to facilitate human missions to Mars.
Artemis IV is a planned mission of the NASA-led Artemis program. The mission will include the fourth use of a Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle, will send an Orion spacecraft with four astronauts to the Lunar Gateway space station, install a new module on the Gateway, and conduct the second lunar landing of the Artemis program.
Artemis V is the fifth planned mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first crewed flight of the Blue Moon lander. The mission will launch four astronauts on a Space Launch System rocket and an Orion to the Lunar Gateway and will be the third lunar landing of the Artemis program. In addition, Artemis V will also deliver two new elements to the Gateway Space Station.
The Boeing Human Landing System (HLS) was the name of a proposed lunar lander concept by Boeing that was submitted by Boeing to NASA on 5 November 2019 as part of the Artemis program and the NextSTEP H. The proposal was presented as the "quickest and simplest method" for a 2024 Moon landing. The lunar lander concept was not selected for funding by NASA as part of Artemis in the 30 April 2020 announcement.
Starship HLS is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under the Human Landing System contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA's Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon.
The Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) was a human spaceflight lunar lander design concept proposed in 2020/21 for the NASA Human Landing System (HLS) component of the Artemis program. Blue Origin was the lead contractor for the multi-element lunar lander that was to include major components from several large US government space contractors including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper Laboratory.
The Dynetics Autonomous Logistics Platform for All-Moon Cargo Access (ALPACA)—also known as Dynetics HLS—(ILV) is a human spaceflight lunar lander design concept proposed in 2020/21 for the NASA Human Landing System (HLS) component of the Artemis program. Dynetics was the lead contractor for the ALPACA lander—other contractors included Sierra Nevada Corporation—for NASA's Artemis Program.
A Human Landing System (HLS) is a spacecraft in the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Artemis program that is expected to land humans on the Moon. These are being designed to convey astronauts from the Lunar Gateway space station in lunar orbit to the lunar surface, sustain them there, and then return them to the Gateway station. As of 2024 NASA intends to use Starship HLS for Artemis III, an enhanced Starship HLS for Artemis IV, and a Blue Origin HLS for Artemis V.
Under the NASA plan, a mission to land on the Moon would take place during the third launch of the Space Launch System. Astronauts, including the first woman to walk on the Moon, Jim Bridenstine said, would first stop at the orbiting lunar outpost. They would then take a lander to the surface near its south pole, where frozen water exists within the craters.
NASA has removed the Lunar Gateway from its "critical path" to return humans to the Moon by 2024, according to a SpaceNews report.
... Loverro reiterated previous statements that the Gateway will not be used for the Artemis 3 mission that will attempt to land humans on the Moon to "make that mission have a higher probability of success".
... the suits would not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest ... a lunar landing in late 2024 as NASA currently plans is not feasible.