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Artemis 2 mission could launch earlier than April

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Artemis 2 uses Boeing ( BA ) and Northrop Grumman's ( NOC ) SLS rocket,

Lockheed Martin's ( LMT ) Orion capsule

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Artemis 3 planned for 2027 with SpaceX's Starship

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By Joey Roulette

Sept 23 (Reuters) - NASA officials on Tuesday said the

agency's first crewed flight in its Artemis program - a trip

around the moon and back - is on track for launch in April and

could potentially be moved up to February.

The space agency's Artemis program is the flagship U.S.

effort to return humans to the moon, a multibillion dollar

series of missions that rivals a similar effort by China, which

is aiming for a 2030 astronaut moon landing.

Artemis 2, a 10-day flight in which a crew of four

astronauts will fly around the moon and back, is a precursor

test to the agency's first astronaut moon landing since 1972.

That mission, Artemis 3, is a far more ambitious and complex

endeavor currently planned for 2027 and involving a moon lander

variant of SpaceX's Starship rocket.

Artemis 2 involves NASA's Space Launch System rocket,

built by Boeing ( BA ) and Northrop Grumman ( NOC ), and its

Orion capsule, built by Lockheed Martin ( LMT ). Last year, NASA

delayed the mission by several months to April 2026.

"We intend to keep that commitment," Lakiesha Hawkins, an

acting senior official in NASA's exploration unit, said during a

news conference on Tuesday of the 2026 date.

She added that the readiness of NASA's SLS and Orion

spacecraft could potentially warrant an earlier launch date, but

that safety considerations will ultimately guide when the

mission launches.

The Orion capsule will ride atop the giant, 322-foot-tall

(98 meters) SLS rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in

Florida, the first time the spacecraft duo will fly with humans.

Artemis 2 will fly astronauts Reid Wiseman, the

mission's commander who last flew on a Russian Soyuz rocket to

the International Space Station in 2014; Victor Glover, the

pilot who flew to space in 2020 on a SpaceX ISS mission;

Christina Koch, a mission specialist who flew on a Soyuz ISS

mission in 2019; and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, another

mission specialist who will fly to space for the first time.

Hansen's inclusion will mark the first Canadian to fly in

the vicinity of the moon.