Artemis II Lunar Mission Postponed by NASA

Artemis II is NASA’s planned, crewed mission to return to the moon. Find out why NASA has rescheduled the space flight and the delay’s implications for an eventual crewed lunar landing.

It’s been more than half a century since humans last set foot on the moon. The last of the crewed lunar missions was Apollo 17 back in December 1972.

Remarkably, by that time, the public had already become jaded with trips to the Moon. Although interest had waned, the crew did leave a lasting legacy.

As Apollo 17’s three modules, America, Casper and Challenger, left Earth orbit for the Moon, Harrison Schmitt snapped a photo of our planet. The resulting Blue Marble, or Whole Earth, image became iconic as humanity’s first view of our entire planet.

We’ve Never Returned to the Moon

Despite Apollo’s many triumphs, we’ve never returned to the Moon, and all our other Solar System missions have involved uncrewed vessels. Even so, NASA plans to change that with Project Artemis.

In 2022, NASA completed a spectacularly successful uncrewed Artemis test flight. The Space Launch System (SLS) lifted an uncrewed Orion spacecraft into…