Artemis II, journey to the far-side of the moon

After a half-century hiatus, NASA is sending four astronauts on a ten-day lunar fly-around.

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will be the first to see the far-side of the moon in its entirety, which will be visible as large as a basketball held at arm’s length.

The journey will serve as a test flight for what will be the main objective of Artemis 3, which will test the docking between the spacecraft and the lunar lander. 

A key part of the mission is to photograph areas of the moon’s south pole where the next human landing and the eventual lunar base are planned, along with testing NASA’s systems in lunar orbit conditions.

This is essential for NASA to finally set foot on the moon’s surface during missions 4 and 5 of the program, which are currently scheduled for 2028.

"What we learn from this mission is going to help enable America’s return to the lunar surface," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters earlier this year, "When we arrive on the moon, we’re there to stay."

"The nation, and the world, has been waiting a long time to do this again," said Wiseman, a veteran NASA astronaut and the commander for Artemis II, as 40,000 people are expected to flood beaches and causeways to bear witness to a spectacle not seen in almost 54 years.

Takeoff will take place from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 1 April at 6.24pm Eastern Time (ET). 

The mission will use a ‘boomerang’ trajectory capable of returning the spacecraft to Earth without using its engines, making use of the interplay of forces exerted upon it by the gravity of the Earth and the moon.

For this free-turn trajectory to work, Artemis II can only occur within five or six days of each lunar cycle, with only two hours on the chosen day to attempt the launch. If weather forecasts are unfavourable, NASA will have to postpone the mission.

The Orion spacecraft will fly several thousand miles beyond the moon, then executing a U-turn to loop back home. 

The journey is predicted to reach more than 7,400km beyond the far-side of the moon on day six, over 400,000km away from Earth, breaking the April 1970 record set by the unfortunate Apollo 13 mission.

The spacecraft will enter the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of over 40,000km/h, heating the hull to over 2,700 degrees Celsius.

After slowing to a speed of 30km/h, Orion will splash-land into the Pacific Ocean, somewhere off the coast of San Diego, California.