All the news of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s attempt to returns humans to the Moon

As a result of cold weather and windy conditions moving through Florida, NASA is now targeting Monday, February 2nd for a wet dress rehearsal of the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Depending on how Monday’s rehearsal goes, NASA will potentially set a launch date for Artemis II. But as a result of the weather-related delays, NASA says February 6th and 7th “are no longer viable opportunities” for a launch. Sunday, February 8th will instead be the first potential window.

NASA originally planned to conduct the wet dress rehearsal for the rocket this weekend, which is currently stacked with the Orion spacecraft on Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center. The 49 hour rehearsal includes fueling the rocket (hence the term wet) and a simulated countdown that ends 33 seconds before launch. During the rehearsal NASA engineers will test emergency escape procedures at the launch site and collect data from the SLS. A full wet rehearsal must be completed before the Artemis II mission will be cleared for launch next week.

NASA has, once again, postponed the Artemis missions that will return humans to the Moon. The Artemis II mission, which will have astronauts orbiting the Moon, had already been pushed from 2024 to September 2025 but is now planned for April 2026. Artemis III, which will return astronauts to the surface of the Moon near its south pole, is now planned to launch the following year in mid-2027.

The 10-day Artemis II mission will send four astronauts to the Moon, including Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen. The mission won’t include a landing, but it will be the first time astronauts launch aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket inside the Orion crew capsule that will orbit the Moon before returning to Earth with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

After asking both SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop cargo landers for its Artemis missions, NASA has announced plans to use those landers to deliver heavy equipment to the Moon.

The agency wants Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use its Starship cargo lander to deliver a pressurized rover to the Moon “no earlier” than 2032, while Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will be tasked with delivering a lunar surface habitat no sooner than 2033. Both launches will support NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to bring humans back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.

NASA has selected Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab to develop the lunar terrain rover for its Artemis lunar explorations. All three companies are in the running for task orders with a potential value of $4.6 billion over the next 13 years.

The trio will develop their team’s ideas for a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) to help astronauts explore the Moon’s south polar region. It’s believed the area contains frozen water, so it makes sense for NASA to set up base camp there.

NASA has pushed back its timeline for the crewed Artemis missions that will send human beings to the Moon. The first one, Artemis II, was supposed to take place later this year, but now it will launch in September 2025 to orbit the Earth’s satellite, with the landing mission, Artemis III, now planned for a year later in September 2026. NASA said the Artemis IV mission to take humans to the lunar Gateway space station in 2028 is still on track.

The future missions are intended to “establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon” and “land the first woman and the first person of color” on its surface. The Artemis missions use NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which was also subject to years of setbacks before NASA deemed it ready for duty.

NASA’s massive Space Launch System (SLS) is almost ready for liftoff after facing multiple setbacks, including two scrubbed launch attempts and two hurricane-caused delays. This highly anticipated rocket launch has been over a decade in the making and marks NASA’s return to crewed missions to the Moon. This mission is called Artemis I, and while there won’t be any astronauts on board during this launch, it will serve as a test for the future goal of putting the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon.

During its first launch, the SLS will catapult NASA’s Orion capsule into space, where it will embark on a voyage around the Moon that is expected to last until December 11th, when it will splash back down into the ocean. On November 4th, NASA rolled the rocket back out to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida — a four-mile journey that took nearly nine hours.

Clear your plans on Saturday: NASA says we’re going to have a rocket launch.

The space agency moved the date for the next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to Saturday, September 3rd, after determining that the initial plan for Friday was going to run into bad weather.

Acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk said Friday that under President Biden’s budget request, the agency’s Artemis mission has a new goal: in addition to landing the first woman on the Moon, it will also send the first person of color to the lunar surface. So far, the only Earthlings to touch the Moon’s surface have been white men.

“The president’s discretionary request increases NASA’s ability to better understand Earth and further monitor and predict the impacts of climate change,” Jurczyk said in a statement. “It also gives us the necessary resources to continue advancing America’s bipartisan Moon to Mars space exploration plan, including landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon under the Artemis program.”

NASA is opting to fly its future deep-space crew capsule Orion “as is” next year, after the agency discovered that one of the spacecraft’s power instruments had suffered a failure. Engineers had been mulling over whether to replace the instrument before the vehicle’s flight but ultimately decided that there was enough redundancy in the system to withstand the failed component.

“NASA has confidence in the health of the overall power and data system, which has been through thousands of hours of powered operations and testing,” the agency wrote in a blog post announcing the decision. “Engineers will perform additional testing and continue to monitor the health of the spacecraft while Orion is powered on to provide continued confidence in the system.”

One of Canada’s astronauts will be sent around the Moon as part of a partnership between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), NASA announced today. The two organizations have formally agreed to collaborate on building a lunar space station called the Lunar Gateway. The Gateway is just one part of NASA’s larger Artemis program, which is focused on landing a woman on the Moon by 2024.

A Canadian astronaut will participate in NASA’s planned Artemis II mission, and the CSA also has a seat on a future flight to the Gateway once it is complete. By joining the Artemis II mission, Canada will become the second country to have an astronaut fly around the Moon, the CSA says. Canada currently has just four active astronauts, and the CSA has not announced which will be participating in this partnership.

On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence hosted his last meeting of the National Space Council in Florida, using the opportunity to announce a list of NASA astronauts who will be considered for future missions to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

This cadre of astronauts — dubbed the Artemis Team — includes 18 astronauts, some with past flight experience and some who have yet to fly to space. The list includes some notable names, such as Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, the two women who made history by performing the first all-women spacewalk. Two of the astronauts, Victor Glover and Kate Rubins, are currently living on board the International Space Station. Five of the 18 made an appearance at the National Space Council meeting today at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida: Meir, Jessica Watkins, Anne McClain, Matthew Dominick, and Joe Acaba.

Engineers are racing to fix a failed piece of equipment on NASA’s future deep-space crew capsule Orion ahead of its first flight to space. It may require months of work to replace and fix. Right now, engineers at NASA and Orion’s primary contractor, Lockheed Martin, are trying to figure out the best way to fix the component and how much time the repairs are going to take.

In early November, engineers at Lockheed Martin working on Orion noticed that a power component inside the vehicle had failed, according to an internal email and an internal PowerPoint presentation seen by The Verge. The component is within one of the spacecraft’s eight power and data units, or PDUs. The PDUs are the “main power/data boxes,” for Orion according to the email, responsible for activating key systems that Orion needs during flight.

Senate appropriators are proposing to allocate $1 billion to NASA next year for the construction of new lunar landers to take humans to the surface of the Moon — roughly $2.4 billion short of what the agency requested. The shortfall threatens to delay NASA’s ambitious plan of landing the first woman on the Moon by 2024.

Today, the Senate Appropriations Committee released 12 funding bills for next year, laying out proposed budgets for the federal government. The newly released legislation would allocate a total of $23.5 billion to NASA, an increase over last year’s NASA budget but roughy $1.75 billion less than the $25.2 billion the administration had asked for.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine says he plans to leave his position at the space agency under the new Joe Biden administration, even if he’s asked to stay, according to an interview he did with Aviation Week. Bridenstine said the decision would be to ensure NASA has the right leader who connects with the new president.

“What you need is somebody who has a close relationship with the president of the United States,” Bridenstine told Aviation Week. “You need somebody who is trusted by the administration…. including the OMB [Office of Management and Budget], the National Space Council and the National Security Council, and I think that I would not be the right person for that in a new administration.”

New observations of the Moon reveal that lunar water may be more accessible than originally thought. The new data is particularly exciting for NASA, which hopes to leverage the Moon’s resources — notably water ice embedded in the soil — to help future astronauts live and work on the lunar surface.

In one study, researchers detected water directly on the lunar surface, finding the molecule on areas of the Moon lit by the Sun. A second study speculates that water ice might be trapped in tiny pockets or small craters littered all over the Moon’s surface, making water potentially more abundant and more accessible than we could have imagined. The two studies were published today in the journal Nature.

Today, NASA announced that eight countries — including the United States — have signed an international agreement known as the Artemis Accords, forming what NASA calls a broad and diverse coalition of nations committed to standardized lunar exploration.

NASA announced its intention to create the Artemis Accords back in May, after working with the US State Department and the National Space Council to come up with a draft set of rules for exploring the Moon. The document’s name refers to NASA’s Artemis program, an ambitious initiative that aims to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon. NASA hopes to partner with multiple countries for the program, and the agency created the Artemis Accords to ensure that other nations could agree on best practices for sending robots and people to the lunar surface.

The head of Russia’s space program said today that NASA’s plans to send people back to the Moon are “too US-centric” for Russia to participate. He has been critical of the program in the past and now says that Russia would only be open to participating if the Moon plans were more focused on international cooperation.

“The most important thing here would be to base this program on the principles of international cooperation that we’ve all used” to fly the ISS, Dmitry Rogozin, the director-general of Roscosmos, said through a translator during a virtual press conference at the International Astronautical Congress. He added: “If we could get back to considering making these principles as the foundation of the program, then Roscosmos could also consider its participation.”

NASA is officially in the market for Moon rocks — and it’s willing to pay any company that’s capable of scooping them up.

Today, the space agency is putting out a call for proposals from companies, challenging them to snag small samples of rocks on the Moon’s surface. The companies will have to prove that they have collected lunar samples in some kind of small container by sending pictures and data to NASA. If satisfied, NASA pledges to purchase the samples for between $15,000 and $25,000. Eventually, NASA will retrieve the rock samples and bring them back to Earth.

House appropriators don’t intend to substantially increase NASA’s budget, potentially jeopardizing the agency’s plans of sending astronauts back to the Moon by 2024.

Today, the House Appropriations Committee released its latest funding bill for fiscal year 2021, detailing the budgets for all commerce, justice, and science agencies in the US. The bill would give NASA a total budget of $22.63 billion for next year, the same amount the agency received for 2020. However, it’s nearly $3 billion less than the $25.2 billion the Trump administration called for in the president’s budget request — a hefty amount intended to fund an ambitious lunar return.

When NASA sends astronauts back to the Moon, they’ll need a place to go to the bathroom when they reach the lunar surface. And in order to create the best Moon toilet the Solar System has to offer, NASA wants to hear from members of the public who might have ideas on the best way to manufacture an easy-to-use lunar restroom.

Today, NASA is announcing the “Lunar Loo Challenge,” a competition in partnership with HeroX to come up with the best space toilet for the agency’s future human lunar lander. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024, the lander will take astronauts from lunar orbit down to the Moon’s surface. That means the restroom on board has to be versatile: it will need to work in orbit, where the astronauts will be weightless, and also when astronauts are experiencing one-sixth of Earth’s gravity on the lunar surface. And without much gravity, things can get a little messy if you don’t prepare.

Today, NASA announced the creation of the Artemis Accords, a new set of standards on how to explore the Moon. The agency hopes that other countries will agree to the terms, which lay out how humanity will act on the Moon, including how to mine resources from the lunar surface and ways to protect heritage Apollo sites.

The Artemis Accords, first reported by Reuters, are a reference to NASA’s Artemis program, an initiative to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has been clear that he wants the agency’s international partners to work with NASA to create a sustainable presence on and around the lunar surface. However, NASA wants everyone to be on the same page in how they’ll behave when they reach the Moon.