How Artemis Will Land Humans on the Moon

Three launch systems and two landers from Boeing, SpaceX, and Blue Origin are all part of the complicated puzzle of NASA’s Artemis program.

Monday, January 06, 2025 at 11:29 AM ET

Verified

The Starship HLS stands like a giant 1950s science-fiction spaceship in this artist’s concept, spanning 30 feet (9 m) wide and reaching 160 feet (50 m) above the Moon’s surface. [Credit: NASA]

Key Takeaways:

The Artemis program is an ambitious international and commercial initiative aiming to return humans to the moon, especially the lunar south pole, utilizing a complex system of new rockets, spacecraft, and landers.
While Artemis 1 successfully validated core systems, the program faces significant technical challenges, including issues with the Orion heat shield, development of specialized lunar spacesuits, and the complex in-orbit refueling of the Starship Human Landing System (HLS).
These challenges and the program's inherent complexity have resulted in repeated delays, pushing the first crewed lunar landing (Artemis 3) to a more realistic timeline of late 2028, significantly later than public announcements.
Future missions plan to establish a sustained lunar presence, incorporating infrastructure like the Lunar Gateway space station and diverse landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, contingent on overcoming ongoing technical and financial hurdles.

See a mistake? Contact us.

Sixty-five years ago, the USSR shocked the world by sending the first robotic emissary from Earth to the moon. The September 1959 impact of Luna 2 on northeastern Mare Imbrium was a stunning achievement, reaching the moon less than two years after the launch of Sputnik 1 ushered in the Space Age. The event helped ignite the technological firestorm now known as the Space Race between the U.S. and the USSR.

The U.S. responded to the lunar challenge with a flurry of robotic and human explorers. Less than 10 years after Luna 2 reached the moon, Neil Armstrong took his “one small step for mankind” on the Sea of Tranquility.