NASA preps to send astronauts around the Moon as it races with China

U.S. government officials and astronauts at the Johnson Space Center this week touted their commitment to accelerating lunar exploration as an important step to achieve NASA’s deep-space ambitions.

The agency confirmed plans to send astronauts on a lunar flyby next year. The mission, which will zip four crew members some potentially as far as 250,000 miles from Earth, aims to set the stage for an even more difficult objective: landing people on the moon before China does.

“We certainly are pressing and want to achieve our goals to be the first to land on the moon since Apollo," said Lori Glaze, a top NASA exploration official. While safety is foremost, “there is a sense of urgency," she said.

NASA hasn’t taken crews to the lunar surface since the final Apollo mission in 1972. Its program to make a return trip is known as Artemis, named after the mythical Greek goddess of the moon, who was Apollo’s twin sister.

But the Artemis program has struggled with delays, with the moon-bound spacecraft and other hardware needed for it facing technical and production hurdles.

China has been advancing its own lunar effort, setting plans to send people there toward the end of the decade. Elected officials in Washington fear China returning people to the moon first could give the country a strategic advantage in a place where many countries and companies hope to stoke economic and scientific activities.

Artemis I launched in November 2022. The next mission, Artemis II, may launch as soon as early February but no later than April, officials said during a briefing.

“It is very complex. But one thing that I am very grateful for is it is built on capabilities and systems and operations that we have already demonstrated," said Lakiesha Hawkins, a leader in NASA’s exploration division.

Artemis II will be commanded by Reid Wiseman, a former Naval aviator who joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2009. His crew includes U.S. astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

From left, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, U.S. astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman.

“It is a test mission, and we are ready for every scenario," Wiseman said at a briefing Wednesday.

They aim to fly deeper into space than anyone has gone in decades, aboard an Orion spacecraft that will be launched by NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. Contractors, including Boeing and Northrop Grumman on SLS and Lockheed Martin with Orion, have been developing the vehicles for years, but neither have ever carried people.

The Artemis II mission will lift off from Florida, and aims to get the crew to an orbit around the moon after a four-day trip there. During the mission, the crew will practice operating in a confined space far from Earth, doing everything from testing Orion’s life-support system to practicing emergency response.

The astronauts plan to document what they see at the moon for future scientific and exploration efforts, and hope to view parts of the far side no humans have ever seen. Experiments will also be on board, including one that will investigate how radiation affects so-called organ chips carrying their tissue.

Re-entry risks

One of the toughest parts of the flight will occur when Orion returns to Earth.

During re-entry, the spacecraft will face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it travels around 25,000 miles an hour before slowing to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean. A heat shield measuring about 17 feet across is installed on the underside of the Orion capsule to protect it on the way back.

The Artemis II Orion crew module. During re-entry, the spacecraft will face temperatures of 5,000 degrees.

After the first Artemis flight nearly three years ago, officials found more than 100 locations on the shield where a protective material broke off during re-entry. That material is supposed to gradually wear down. Though the craft was able to make it through re-entry, its performance raised concerns about crew safety.

NASA and a review team concluded the spacecraft’s trajectory back through the atmosphere caused the conditions that lead the pieces to break off.

Howard Hu, the Orion program manager at NASA, said testing and modeling show a new re-entry path will provide the crew a safe way back to Earth. The new re-entry trajectory could result in some of the same issues that cropped up on the heat shield during the first Artemis flight, he said, but any potential material loss won’t be of the same magnitude.

The next act

Completing Artemis II next year is critical to set up Artemis III. That mission, currently slated to occur sometime in 2027, is meant to feature U.S. astronauts setting foot on the moon’s surface.

The operation depends not just on SLS and Orion but also on hardware put together by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is developing a variant of its Starship vehicle to transport astronauts to the lunar surface, and Axiom Space, a Houston-based company building new spacesuits.

An Axiom spokeswoman said the company is progressing toward delivering the suits in 2027.

During a Friday meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Paul Hill, a former NASA flight director and panel member, said that the Starship lander may be years late.

Hill said that SpaceX is still figuring out how to transfer supercold propellants in orbit, key to the company’s plans to use its massive Starship vehicle for deep-space missions.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com