when was last visit to moon

Fifty years ago, on December 19, 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific. They were the last humans to visit the Moon —and the last to be more than 400 miles from the Earth. Since that date, astronauts have only been in low Earth orbit. It is thus richly symbolic that NASA’s Artemis I mission had its own Pacific splashdown recently, during Apollo 17’s 50th-anniversary celebration. It was, of course, only an uncrewed test of the space agency’s new lunar craft. Humans will not fly around the Moon for two to three years. Why has it taken more than five decades to send humans back to the Moon?

It was certainly not Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan ’s expectation when he stepped off the lunar surface for the last time on December 14, 1972 . He was aware, as was everyone in the space agency, that lean times were ahead. Two years earlier, NASA had deleted Apollos 18 and 19 to save money and focus on the Space Shuttle. Congress and two presidential administrations had been cutting NASA’s budget since 1967 as the Vietnam War, poverty, urban problems, and environmental crises made the space program less and less popular. Once Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the surface in July 1969, many Americans wondered why we didn’t stop. We had beaten the Soviets and proved American technological superiority—the fundamental purpose of Project Apollo. Although the later landings yielded a huge scientific haul of samples and data, the public did not much care about lunar science’s value to understanding solar system history. It seemed like a waste of billions of dollars to voters preoccupied with other problems. Thus, Cernan knew it could be two decades before a new human lunar program would be feasible. But it was hard to believe that American astronauts wouldn’t make it back before the end of the century.

When the Apollo 17 astronauts splashed down successfully in the Pacific Ocean on December 19, 1972, it was the last time humans had visited the Moon. (Image courtesy of NASA)

The Space Shuttle finally orbited in 1981, after thin NASA budgets and challenging new technologies caused years of delay. With a new, space enthusiast president in office, Ronald Reagan, NASA leadership set about pushing what they had always believed was the “next logical step” to a sustainable space infrastructure, a space station. The shuttle had been sold to the Nixon administration as a way to make spaceflight much cheaper (a promise never fulfilled), but it was originally supposed to be a crew and cargo transport vehicle to a permanent space base. In late 1983, Reagan approved what eventually became the International Space Station (ISS).

It fell to his successor, George H.W. Bush, to propose sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars. Bush spoke on the steps of our Museum on July 20, 1989: the 20th anniversary of Armstrong and Aldrin’s historic first Moonwalk. But his Space Exploration Initiative was short-lived. NASA’s 90-day study produced a politically toxic estimate of half a trillion dollars to establish a Moon base and land humans on Mars. Congress quickly lost interest.

As it was, the agency was preoccupied with keeping the shuttle flying after recovering from the Challenger disaster of 1986, while advancing a space station project already years late and billions over budget. The year 1990 saw major technical embarrassments, notably the discovery that the newly launched Hubble Space Telescope had a flawed mirror. Politicians and the media attacked NASA as bloated and bureaucratic, leading to cost overruns and failures. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War also undercut one of the civil space program’s key rationales. The space station came within one vote of being canceled in 1992 and was only politically safe after the Clinton administration merged it with the tottering Russian program to create the ISS in 1993-1994.  Although the Cold War’s end ushered in an era of stagnant NASA budgets, it did have the ironic effect of saving the station, based on the argument that it would keep Russian rocket engineers from working for Iran, Iraq, or North Korea. Going back to the Moon was not on the agenda.

The next attempt came after the second shuttle disaster, that of Columbia in 2003. Criticisms of NASA, beyond those specific to the accident, focused on a human space program that seemed to have little direction beyond keeping the shuttle and ISS alive. In response, President George W. Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration in early 2004. The shuttle would be phased out once the ISS was complete. NASA would create new vehicles to go back to the Moon and on to Mars. Then, as now, the agency argued that we needed to develop at the Moon the experience and technology necessary to go to the Red Planet. NASA created the Constellation Program, which was to put Americans on the Moon by the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11—2019. But it was predicated on the shuttle program ending sooner than it did, freeing up money. Constellation was underfunded and soon fell behind schedule, producing cost overruns. President Barack Obama canceled it soon after coming into office.

That leads us to the last, and in many ways, most unusual part of the story. Constellation’s cancellation did not actually kill the human lunar program. Democratic and Republican senators, particularly those from states with NASA centers or industries tied to the human space program, banded together. They funded a giant booster and a spacecraft based on Constellation designs and shuttle technologies. Thus the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft emerged in the early 2010s. But they had no clear destination. Eventually, Congress directed NASA to build a small station in lunar orbit and develop the capability to land and create a Moon base. Under the Trump administration, the program got a name, Artemis (the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology), and a new objective: carry out a landing by 2024. While that date was never realistic, it put Artemis on a path that has continued under the Biden administration. After 50 years, the United States again has a sustained program to send astronauts back to the Moon.

Project Artemis gives the United States a sustained program to send astronauts back to the Moon, after 50 years. (Image courtesy of NASA)

Why for over 40 years was there no such program and why has one emerged in the last decade? The answers are rooted in money, national prestige, and space program jobs. Apollo’s success undercut the logic of a program based primarily on Cold War competition; the failure of the Soviets to send any cosmonauts to the Moon only reinforced the disinterest in more missions. In an era of cutbacks, just building a presence in low Earth orbit became NASA’s only feasible human spaceflight program. The attempts of the two Bush presidencies to change that dynamic ran into a lack of support in the public and the political class for greatly increasing the agency’s budget.

What changed after 2010? The shuttle program’s end in 2011 freed up budget money but threatened massive layoffs in NASA centers and the aerospace industry. Congress wanted to sustain jobs in key states and felt that the human spaceflight program needed a higher purpose than just keeping ISS operational. Artemis has thus continued without a broad popular mandate or clear international competition, contradicting the pattern of the previous 40 years. China is mounting a space program that now includes robotic lunar and Mars probes, a permanent space station, and ambitions to build a Moon base. Competition with a foreign power may again become a major factor in the future, helping to sustain Artemis, but has not been critical so far.

The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission successfully splashed down on December 11, 2022. (Image courtesy of NASA)

How will the American public react when astronauts go back to the Moon? Undoubtedly with excitement, just as there was in the 1960s. But what happens afterward? Will the public quickly lose interest, as it did after Apollo, and even if that happens, will it matter? Is there now a political base to keep Artemis in business at some level? Given the pattern of the last decade, I would say yes. Whatever happens, I look forward to humans once again traveling to the Moon in the next few years, whether on Artemis II or SpaceX’s Starship, both of which may fly there by 2025.

Michael J. Neufeld is a Senior Curator in the Space History Department and the lead curator of the "Destination Moon" gallery.

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Astronauts explain why no human has visited the moon in 50 years — and the reasons are depressing

• The last time a person visited the moon was in December 1972, during NASA's Apollo 17 mission.
• Astronauts say the reasons are budgetary and political, not scientific or technical.
• NASA could land people on the moon again by 2026 at the earliest. Now a US lander is on the moon again.

Landing 12 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest achievements , if not the greatest.

Astronauts on the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s collected rocks, took photos , performed experiments , planted flags , and then came home. But those stays didn't establish a lasting human presence on the moon.

More than 50 years after the most recent crewed moon landing — Apollo 17 in December 1972 — there are plenty of reasons to return people to Earth's giant, dusty satellite and stay there.

We're getting closer. On Thursday, a US lunar lander touched down on the moon's surface for the first time since Apollo 17. The uncrewed Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, was designed by the Houston company Intuitive Machines with a $118 million contract from NASA. It's the first commercial mission to touch down on the moon and a huge step toward new human landings.

NASA has promised we will see US astronauts on the moon again soon-ish — maybe by September 2026 at the earliest, in a program called Artemis , which is set to include the first woman, first Black astronaut, and first Canadian to touch the lunar surface.

Jim Bridenstine, who ran NASA during the Trump administration, said it's not science or technology hurdles that have held the US back from doing this sooner.

"If it wasn't for the political risk, we would be on the moon right now," Bridenstine said on a phone call with reporters in 2018. "In fact, we would probably be on Mars ."

So why haven't astronauts been back to the moon in more than 50 years?

"It was the political risks that prevented it from happening," Bridenstine said. "The program took too long and it costs too much money ."

Researchers and entrepreneurs have long pushed for the creation of a crewed base on the moon — a lunar space station.

"A permanent human research station on the moon is the next logical step. It's only three days away. We can afford to get it wrong and not kill everybody," Chris Hadfield, a former astronaut, previously told Business Insider. "And we have a whole bunch of stuff we have to invent and then test in order to learn before we can go deeper out."

A lunar base could evolve into a fuel depot for deep-space missions , lead to the creation of unprecedented space telescopes , make it easier to live on Mars , and solve long-standing scientific mysteries about Earth and the moon's creation . It could even spur a thriving off-world economy, perhaps one built around lunar space tourism .

But many astronauts and other experts suggest the biggest impediments to making new crewed moon missions a reality are banal and somewhat depressing.

It's really expensive to get to the moon — but not that expensive

A tried-and-true hurdle for any spaceflight program, especially missions that involve people, is the steep cost.

NASA's 2023 budget is $25.4 billion , and the Biden administration is asking Congress to boost that to $27.2 billion for 2024 .

Those amounts may sound like a windfall until you consider that the total gets split among all the agency's divisions and ambitious projects: the James Webb Space Telescope , the giant rocket project called Space Launch System , and far-flung missions to the sun , Jupiter , Mars , the asteroid belt , the Kuiper belt , and the edge of our solar system . 

By contrast, the US defense budget for 2023 is about $858 billion .

With such a tight budget, NASA is vulnerable to government gridlocks. Congress has been slow to pass its 2024 budget — a delay NASA cited as a major reason for laying off 8% of its workforce at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in February.

Plus, NASA's budget is somewhat small relative to its past.

"NASA's portion of the federal budget peaked at 4% in 1965," Walter Cunningham, an Apollo 7 astronaut, said during congressional testimony in 2015.

In comparison, NASA's 2023 budget represents roughly 0.5% of US spending, according to a report from the Planetary Society . It has fluctuated between 0.4% and 1% since the 1970s, the report said.

Returning to the moon costs a significant chunk of that budget. A 2021 report from NASA estimated that the Artemis program to return people to the moon would cost a total of $93 billion from 2012 through 2025.

The Apollo program, by comparison, cost about $257 billion in today's dollars.

"Manned exploration is the most expensive space venture and, consequently, the most difficult for which to obtain political support," Cunningham said during his 2015 testimony.

He added, according to Scientific American : "Unless the country, which is Congress here, decided to put more money in it, this is just talk that we're doing here."

Referring to Mars missions and a return to the moon, Cunningham said, "NASA's budget is way too low to do all the things that we've talked about."

The problem with presidents

President Joe Biden may — or may not — be in office in 2026, when NASA plans to send astronauts back on the moon.

And therein lies another major problem: partisan political whiplash.

"Why would you believe what any president said about a prediction of something that was going to happen two administrations in the future?" Hadfield previously told Business Insider. "That's just talk."

The process of designing, engineering, and testing a spacecraft that could get people to another world easily outlasts a two-term president. But incoming presidents and lawmakers often scrap the previous leader's space-exploration priorities.

"I would like the next president to support a budget that allows us to accomplish the mission that we are asked to perform, whatever that mission may be," Scott Kelly, an astronaut who spent a year in space , wrote in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" thread in January 2016, before Donald Trump took office.

But presidents and Congress don't often seem to care about staying the course.

In 2004, for example, the Bush administration tasked NASA to come up with a way to replace the space shuttle, which was set to retire, and also return to the moon. The agency came up with the Constellation program to land astronauts on the moon using a rocket called Ares and a spaceship called Orion.

NASA spent $9 billion over five years designing, building, and testing hardware for that human-spaceflight program.

Yet after President Barack Obama took office — and the Government Accountability Office released a report about NASA's inability to estimate a realistic cost for Constellation — Obama pushed to scrap the program and signed off on the SLS rocket instead.

Trump didn't scrap SLS, but he did change Obama's goal of launching astronauts to an asteroid , shifting priorities to moon and Mars missions. Trump wanted to see Artemis land astronauts back on the moon in 2024.

Such frequent changes to NASA's expensive priorities have led to cancellation after cancellation, a loss of about $20 billion , and years of wasted time and momentum.

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Biden seems to be a rare exception to the shifty presidential trend: He hasn't toyed with Trump's Artemis priority for NASA, and he's also kept the Space Force intact.

Buzz Aldrin said in testimony to Congress in 2015 that he believed the will to return to the moon must come from Capitol Hill.

"American leadership is inspiring the world by consistently doing what no other nation is capable of doing. We demonstrated that for a brief time 45 years ago. I do not believe we have done it since," Aldrin wrote in a statement . "I believe it begins with a bipartisan congressional and administration commitment to sustained leadership."

The real driving force behind that government commitment to return to the moon is the will of the American people, who vote for politicians and help shape their policy priorities. But public interest in lunar exploration has always been lukewarm .

Even at the height of the Apollo program, after Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, only 53% of Americans said they thought the program was worth the cost. For the most part, US approval of Apollo hovered below 50%.

A 2023 Pew Research Poll found most Americans said NASA should continue leading space exploration. But that doesn't mean people care about going back to the moon — only 12% of the 10,329 respondents said NASA should prioritize human lunar missions.

Support for crewed Mars exploration isn't much stronger, with 11% of the poll's respondents saying it should be a NASA priority. Meanwhile, 60% said scanning the skies for killer asteroids was important.

Many space enthusiasts have long hoped to build a base on the moon, but the lunar surface's harsh environment wouldn't be an ideal place for humans to thrive. NASA

The challenges beyond politics include problematic regolith and eye-popping temperature fluctuations.

The political tug-of-war over NASA's mission and budget isn't the only reason people haven't returned to the moon. The moon is also a 4.5-billion-year-old death trap for humans and must not be trifled with or underestimated.

Its surface is littered with craters and boulders that threaten safe landings . The US government spent what would be tens of billions in today's dollars to develop, launch, and deliver satellites to the moon to map its surface and help mission planners scout for Apollo landing sites.

But a bigger worry is what eons of meteorite impacts have created: regolith, also called moon dust.

Following the Apollo missions, scientists quarantined the astronauts for two weeks after they landed, in part because they were worried about the effects of the dust, according to a 2022 NASA study . The fine powder that sits on the moon's surface stuck to their suits and vehicles and even got inside their spacecraft.

Peggy Whitson , an astronaut who has spent 675 days in space, previously told Business Insider that the Apollo missions "had a lot of problems with dust."

"If we're going to spend long durations and build permanent habitats, we have to figure out how to handle that," Whitson said.

An illustration of SpaceX's Starship vehicle on the surface of the moon, with Earth in the distance. Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

There's also a problem with sunlight and deadly solar radiation .

For about 14 days at a time, the side of the moon facing Earth is a boiling hellscape that is exposed directly to the sun's harsh rays; the moon has very little atmosphere, and therefore no protection against solar radiation.

The next 14 days that same side is in total darkness, dipping to temperatures below minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit, making the moon's surface one of the colder places in the solar system.

NASA is developing a fission power system that could supply astronauts with electricity during weekslong lunar nights — which would also be useful on other worlds, including Mars.

"There is not a more environmentally unforgiving or harsher place to live than the moon," the astronautical engineer Madhu Thangavelu wrote. "And yet, since it is so close to the Earth, there is not a better place to learn how to live away from planet Earth."

NASA has designed dust- and sun-resistant spacesuits and rovers , though it's uncertain whether that equipment is anywhere near ready to launch.

"I already knew going to the moon was hard," Reid Weisman, the Artemis II mission commander, said at a press conference in August. "But boy, it's harder than I thought."

A generation of billionaire 'space nuts' may get there

Another issue, astronauts say, is NASA's graying workforce. In 2019, more American kids polled said they dreamed about becoming YouTube stars than astronauts .

"You've got to realize young people are essential to this kind of an effort," the Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt previously told BI. "The average age of the people in Mission Control for Apollo 13 was 26 years old, and they'd already been on a bunch of missions."

An estimated 14% of NASA's workforce is over 40 years old, according to a Zippia analysis.

"That's not where innovation and excitement comes from. Excitement comes from when you've got teenagers and 20-year-olds running programs," Rusty Schweickart, a former NASA astronaut, said. "When Elon Musk lands a [rocket booster] , his whole company is yelling and screaming and jumping up and down."

Musk is part of what the astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman has called a "generation of billionaires who are space nuts," developing a new, private suite of moon-capable rockets .

"The innovation that's been going on over the last 10 years in spaceflight never would've happened if it was just NASA and Boeing and Lockheed," Hoffman told journalists during a roundtable in 2018. "Because there was no motivation to reduce the cost or change the way we do it."

Hoffman was referring to the innovative work of Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, as well as by Jeff Bezos, who founded the aerospace company Blue Origin.

"There's no question: If we're going to go farther, especially if we're going to go farther than the moon, we need new transportation," Hoffman added. "Right now we're still in the horse-and-buggy days of spaceflight."

Many astronauts' desire to return to the moon aligns with Bezos' long-term vision . Bezos has floated a plan to start building the first moon base using Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket system. 

"We will move all heavy industry off of Earth, and Earth will be zoned residential and light industry," he said in April 2018 .

Musk has also spoken at length about how SpaceX's Starship launch system could pave the way for affordable, regular lunar visits.

"My dream would be that someday the moon would become part of the economic sphere of the Earth — just like geostationary orbit and low-Earth orbit," Hoffman said. "Space out as far as geostationary orbit is part of our everyday economy. Someday I think the moon will be, and that's something to work for."

SpaceX launched its complete Starship system for the first time in April.

But the rocket didn't make it to orbit as planned. Leaking propellant triggered fires in the booster, causing the system to veer off course, ultimately triggering the mega-rocket to self-destruct .

Even so, astronauts don't doubt whether we'll get back to the moon and onto Mars. It's just a matter of when .

"I guess eventually things will come to pass where they will go back to the moon and eventually go to Mars — probably not in my lifetime," said the 95-year-old retired astronaut Jim Lovell, who flew to the moon on Apollo 8 and Apollo 13. "Hopefully, they'll be successful."

This story was originally published on July 14, 2018. It has been updated. 

Correction: February 27, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the size of NASA's contract with Intuitive Machines. It was $118 million, not $118 billion. A prior version of this story also misstated the number of moonwalkers. During NASA's Apollo program, 12 people landed on the moon.

Watch: The first private company just landed on the moon. Here's how they did it.

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Why did we stop going to the Moon?

Why haven't we been back since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972?

In July 1969 humans landed on the Moon for the first time, as part of the Apollo 11 mission. But why haven't we been back since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972?

Why haven’t we been back to the Moon?

The Apollo 11 Moon landing in July 1969 was a huge feat of human endeavour, engineering and science. It was a moment that the world had been waiting for. 

Apollo 11 was followed by six further trips to the Moon, five of which landed successfully. 12 men walked on the lunar surface in total.  But in 1970 future Apollo missions were cancelled. Apollo 17 became the last crewed mission to the Moon, for an indefinite amount of time. 

The main reason for this was money. The cost of getting to the Moon was, ironically, astronomical. 

When was the last time we went to space?

Although we haven’t put a human on the lunar surface since the 1970s, there are now regular crewed missions to space. 

Skylab - 1973-1974

Skylab was the first NASA managed and operated space station. It operated between May 1973 and Feb 1974. It had a workshop, an observatory and carried out hundreds of experiments. 

Development and further use of Skylab was delayed due to problems developing the Space shuttle. Eventually the orbital decay of Skylab could not be stopped. Orbital decay is the gradual decrease of distance between two objects in orbit of each other. 

Space Shuttle - 1981-2011

The first reusable spacecraft, NASA’s Space Shuttle enabled satellites to be launched and returned to Earth. The crewed spacecraft allowed NASA to travel to recover damaged satellites, fix them and send them back into space. The Space Shuttle was also instrumental in the development of the ISS.

Mir space station - 1986-2001

Mir was a Russian space station that was in operation from 1986 until 2001, and was the first continuously inhabited research station in orbit. Many experiments were carried out on the space station, and its success would become the blueprint for the current International Space Station. 

International Space Station - 1998-present 

The International Space Station, or ISS, is a continuously inhabited artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. A joint project between the USA, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada, astronauts aboard the ISS carry out various experiments, and live on the station for about six months at a time. 

When was the last time humans were on the Moon? 

The last crewed mission to the Moon was Apollo 17, taking place between 7 and 19 December 1972. It was a 12-day mission and broke many records, the longest space walk, the longest lunar landing and the largest lunar samples brought back to Earth. 

Harrison H. Schmitt was the lunar module pilot, as well as being a geologist. He was joined by Ronald E. Evans as command module pilot and Eugene Cernan as Mission Commander. 

Space Race timeline

Apollo 17 was the only Apollo mission to not carry any astronauts who had previously been test pilots. After the cancellation of Apollo 18, the Apollo mission Schmitt had originally intended to go on, the scientific community lobbied that he be put onto Apollo 17. 

Cernan was the last to leave the lunar surface, and therefore is the most recent person to stand on the Moon. As he ascended to the lunar module he said:

"...I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

Whilst crewed missions to the moon have stopped, research into the moon and journeys to space still take place. There are also future plans for journeys to the Moon. NASA’s Artemis Programme aims to return to the Moon by 2024, and set up a sustained human presence that would allow us to regularly visit our celestial neighbour. 

Find out more about the future of space travel

Why NASA stopped going to the moon

The race to land humans on the Moon was kickstarted by President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas, now known as the ‘We Choose to go to the Moon’ speech. In the speech, Kennedy committed to getting a human to walk on the Moon by the end of the decade:  

"And this will be done in the decade of the 60s. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade."

When the Moon landing took place in 1969, Kennedy’s goal had been achieved, and his deadline met.  

However, with the goal achieved NASA faced large funding cuts, making the future of the Apollo missions untenable. There had originally been 20 Apollo missions planned, but technological and research based missions were not seen as important as the achievement of the Moon landing itself, and the final three missions were cancelled.

Whilst the US government was willing to put a lot of money in to the Apollo missions when it was helpful to the space race, research and technological development were not viewed as a priority. Apollo 11 was a political statement in the midst of the space race, and once it had been made, the necessity for more missions to the Moon was gone. 

Recent NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine highlighted this when he described the space race thus: 

“This was  a contest of political ideologies. It was a contest of economic ideologies. It was a contest of technological prowess. And in this great contest of great powers the United States of America was determined to win." 

Going to the Moon was hugely expensive. Originally Kennedy’s government had estimated $7 billion dollars. In the end, the total cost was $20 billion dollars.

There was also less national support. The Apollo missions had all taken place against the backdrop of civil unrest in the US, and the large amounts of money being spent on space travel became a point of contention for the American public.

As the Cold War thawed, the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) meant that missile production - including those used for space travel - was drastically reduced.

Future plans to go to the Moon are also driven by money. Whilst the Apollo missions saw astronauts live on the Moon for only a few days at a time, journeys to the moon in the 21st century would focus more on the creation of lunar bases or satellites. Bridensteine describes how the future of Lunar travel is about a sustained presence on the Moon. 

"This time when we go to the Moon we're going to stay. That's what we're looking to do."

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A brief history of moon exploration

In the 1950s, the Cold War sparked a race to visit Earth's moon with flybys, robots, and crewed missions. Here's what we discovered—and what's next.

For as long as humans have gazed skyward, the moon has been a focus of fascination. We could always see our cosmic partner’s mottled, cratered face by eye. Later, telescopes sharpened our views of its bumps, ridges, and relict lava seas. Finally, in the mid-20th century, humans visited Earth’s moon and saw its surface up close.

Since then, a volley of spacecraft have studied our nearest celestial neighbor, swooping low over its dusty plains and surveying its curious far side. Now, after six decades of exploration, we are once again aiming to send humans to the lunar surface.

Early forays into space

The earliest forays into lunar exploration were a product of the ongoing Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union sent uncrewed spacecraft to orbit and land on the moon.

The Soviets scored an early victory in January 1959, when Luna 1 , a small Soviet sphere bristling with antennas, became the first spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravity and ultimately fly within about 4,000 miles of the moon’s surface. (Read more about early spaceflight.)

Later in 1959, Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to make contact with the moon's surface when it crashed in the Mare Imbrium basin near the Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus craters. That same year, a third Luna mission captured the first, blurry images of the far side of the moon—where the rugged highland terrain is markedly different from the smoother basins on the side closest to Earth.

Then, the U.S. got in the game with nine NASA Ranger spacecraft that launched between 1961 and 1965, and gave scientists the first close-up views of the moon’s surface. The Ranger missions were daring one-offs, with spacecraft engineered to streak toward the moon and capture as many images as possible before crashing onto its surface. By 1965, images from all the Ranger missions, particularly Ranger 9 , had revealed greater detail about the moon’s rough terrain and the potential challenges of finding a smooth landing site for humans.

In 1966, the Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 became the first vehicle to land safely on the lunar surface. Stocked with scientific and communications equipment, the small spacecraft photographed a ground-level lunar panorama. Later that year, Luna 10 launched, becoming the first spacecraft to successfully orbit the moon.

For Hungry Minds

NASA also landed a spacecraft on the moon’s surface that year with the first of its Surveyor space probes , which carried cameras to explore the moon's surface and soil samplers to analyze lunar rock and dirt. Over the two years that followed, NASA launched five Lunar Orbiter missions that were designed to circle the moon and chart its surface in preparation for the ultimate goal: landing astronauts on the surface. These orbiters photographed about 99 percent of the moon's surface, revealing potential landing sites and paving the way for a giant leap forward in space exploration. (See a map of all lunar landings.)

Humans on the moon

At the time, NASA was racing to fulfill a presidential promise: In 1961, President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to landing a person on the moon before the decade was complete. The Apollo program , by far the most expensive spaceflight endeavor in history , kicked off that year, and by the time it ended in 1972, nine missions and 24 astronauts had orbited or landed on the moon.

Perhaps the most famous of those, Apollo 11 , marked the first time humans had stepped on another world.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin touched down in the Sea of Tranquility in the lunar lander Eagle, while astronaut Michael Collins orbited the moon in the command module Columbia. Armstrong, who pressed the first bootprints into the moon’s surface, famously said , “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” The pair stayed on the moon’s surface for 21 hours and 36 minutes before rendezvousing with Collins and heading back to Earth. ( Exploring the legacy of Apollo 11 at the dawn of a new era of space travel. )

Each mission after Apollo 11 set new milestones in space travel and lunar exploration. Four months after the first humans reached the moon, Apollo 12 touched down, achieving a much more precise landing on the moon.

Apollo 13 narrowly avoided a near-disaster when on-board oxygen tanks exploded in April 1970, forcing the crew to abort a planned moon landing. All three survived.

During the third lunar landing, in January 1971, Apollo 14 , commander Alan Shepard set a new record for the farthest distance traveled on the moon: 9,000 feet. He even lobbed a few golf balls into a nearby crater with a makeshift 6-iron .

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What’s out there? Why humanity keeps pushing the cosmic frontier.

U.S. returns to the moon as NASA's Odysseus successfully touches down

Apollo 15 , launched in July 1971, was the first of three missions capable of a longer stay on the moon. In the course of three days spent on the lunar surface, achievements included collecting hundreds of pounds of lunar samples and traveling more than 17 miles in the first piloted moon buggy. (The Soviet Union had sent a remotely controlled rover to the moon , Lunokhod 1, in 1970.)

Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 in 1972 were the two most recent crewed missions to the moon, and Russia’s Luna-24 crewless spacecraft in 1976 was the last to land until the following century. Samples collected during these lunar explorations produced huge amounts of knowledge about the geology and formation of the Earth’s moon . (See a timeline of the space race and its modern-day version in private spaceflight.)

After the dramatic accomplishments of the 1960s and 1970s, the major space agencies turned their attention elsewhere for several decades. So far, only 12 humans—all Americans and all men—have set foot on the moon.

Moon curiosity builds again

It wasn’t until 1994 that the moon came back into focus for the United States, with a joint mission between NASA and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. The Clementine spacecraft mapped the moon's surface in wavelengths other than visible light, from ultraviolet to infrared . Hiding in the more than 1.8 million digital photos it captured were hints of ice in some of the moon’s craters.

In 1999, the Lunar Prospector orbited the moon, confirming Clementine’s discovery of ice at the lunar poles, a resource that could be crucial for any long-term lunar settlement. The mission's end was spectacular: Prospector slammed into the moon, intending to create a plume that could be studied for evidence of water ice but none was observed. (Ten years later, NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft repeated this experiment and found evidence for water in a shadowed region near the moon’s south pole .)

Since 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken high-resolution maps of the lunar surface. Between 2011 and 2012, it was joined in orbit by NASA’s twin GRAIL probes —named Ebb and Flow—which mapped the moon’s gravitational field before intentionally crashing into a region near the lunar north pole.

The recent—and future—status of moon exploration

NASA isn’t the only space agency with a surging interest in the moon. Within the last two decades, lunar exploration has gone truly international—and even commercial.

In 2007, Japan launched its first lunar orbiter, SELENE . China launched its first lunar spacecraft the same year, and India followed suit in 2008. By 2013, China became the third country to successfully land on the lunar surface, when its Chang’e-3 spacecraft deployed the Yutu rover.

More milestones—both for better and worse—were achieved in 2019. In January, another Chinese lander, Yutu-2, made history by becoming the first rover to touch down on the lunar farside . Meanwhile, India’s second lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-2 , unsuccessfully deployed a small lander, Vikram , on the lunar surface that year. (India’s space agency hopes to try again in 2021 .) And in April 2019 Israel aimed for the moon with the launch of its Beresheet spacecraft . Unfortunately, even though the spacecraft achieved lunar orbit, it crashed during its attempt to land.

Unlike other spacecraft that came before it, Beresheet was built largely with private funding , heralding a new era of lunar exploration in which private companies are hoping to take the reins from governments.

NASA, for one, is partnering with commercial spaceflight companies to develop both robotic and crewed landers for lunar exploration; among those companies are SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Astrobotic. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin have announced the goal of establishing a lunar base near the south pole where people could work and live. SpaceX is developing a spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts to the moon and Mars , and is also developing a plan to bring tourists to lunar orbit. ( The future of spaceflight—from orbital vacations to humans on Mars .)

And not to be overshadowed by the commercial sector, NASA is planning its own ambitious return to the moon. The agency’s Artemis program, a sister to the venerable Apollo project, aims to put the first woman—and the next man— on the moon by 2024 . The backbone of Artemis is NASA’s Orion space capsule , currently in development, although the agency is also partnering with private companies to achieve its goal.

If Artemis goes well, then the near future might also see NASA and partners developing a space station in lunar orbit that could serve as a gateway to destinations on the moon’s surface—and beyond.

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With the Artemis campaign, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.

We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.

We’re going.

WHY WE’RE GOING TO THE MOON

We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation. While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all.

Science & Discovery

With Artemis, we’re building on more than 50 years of exploration experience to reignite America’s passion for discovery.

Economic Opportunity

Artemis missions enable a growing lunar economy by fueling new industries, supporting job growth, and furthering the demand for a skilled workforce.

Inspiration for a New Generation

We will explore more of the Moon than ever before with our commercial and international partners. Along the way, we will engage and inspire new audiences – we are the Artemis Generation.

Why the Moon

The Artemis missions will build a community on the Moon, driving a new lunar economy and inspiring a new generation. Narrator Drew Barrymore and NASA team members explain why returning to the Moon is the natural next step in human exploration, and how the lessons learned from Artemis will pave the way to Mars and beyond.

OUR SUCCESS WILL CHANGE THE WORLD

HOW WE ARE GOING TO THE MOON

We are developing a long-term strategy for lunar exploration that will allow our robots and astronauts to explore more and conduct more science than ever before.

Exploration Systems

Orion Spacecraft

The NASA spacecraft that will carry astronauts from Earth to lunar orbit and back.

Space Launch System Rocket

The only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and cargo to the Moon on a single mission. Upon launch, the Space Launch System will be the most powerful rocket in the world.

Exploration Ground Systems

The structures on the ground necessary to support launch and recovery of returning astronauts.

Human Landing System

Built by American companies, human landing systems are the final mode of transportation that will take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back to orbit.

The spaceship in lunar orbit where astronauts will transfer between Orion and the lander on regular Artemis missions. Gateway will remain in orbit for more than a decade, providing a place to live and work, and supporting long-term science and human exploration on and around the Moon.

Surface Mobility

NASA is develop next-generation spacesuits, human-rated rovers, and spacewalking support systems to help astronauts traverse the lunar surface.

This is the Artemis Generation.

We go to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation.

Artemis I was the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration at the Moon and future missions to Mars.

Four astronauts will fly around the Moon to test NASA's foundational human deep space exploration capabilities, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, for the first time with crew.

Artemis III: NASA’s First Human Mission to the Lunar South Pole

Humans have always been drawn to explore, discover, and learn as much as we can about the world—and worlds—around us.…

NASA’s Artemis IV: Building First Lunar Space Station

NASA and its partners are developing the foundational systems needed for long-term exploration at the Moon for the benefit of…

Living and Working at the Moon

As Artemis missions progress, NASA and its partners will continue to send exploration elements to the surface. Rovers will expand the exploration range and increase science return. Habitation elements will allow crews to stay on the surface for longer periods of time.

Join Artemis

Make,  launch,  teach,  compete  and  learn. Find your favorite way to be part of the Artemis mission.

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• 12 December 2022

Fifty years after astronauts left the Moon, they are going back. Why?

• Alexandra Witze

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In 1972, three years after humans first reached the Moon, Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan was the last to leave it. Credit: NASA

As I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I’d like to just say what I believe history will record: that America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.

These words were spoken by Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan on 14 December 1972, as he prepared to return home from the Moon. With Neil Armstrong’s “one giant leap for mankind”, little more than three years earlier, they bookended a grand human endeavour. After 50 years, they remain the last (officially prepared) words spoken on the Moon.

When Cernan, fellow Moon-walker Harrison Schmitt and command-module pilot Ronald Evans had blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida seven days earlier, it was already clear that this would be the last Apollo mission. But few anticipated that, 50 years on, human exploration of space would be confined to low Earth orbit. Apollo 17 still marks the last time boots crunched into the soil of an alien world; the last time astronauts skipped joyously in the Moon’s low gravity; the last time anyone directly witnessed Earth’s blue globe rising above the grey lunar horizon.

The $93-billion plan to put astronauts back on the Moon

For most of the eight billion people now on Earth, the Apollo era is legend; the main significance of the photograph of a ‘blue marble’ Earth taken from Apollo 17 is as one of the default iPhone wallpapers. But with the launch last month of the Artemis I mission, NASA finally seems to be intent on rekindling the glory days of Apollo. Humanity is about to make a giant leap again. But to what end?

As Cernan and Schmitt guided their lunar module into the narrow Taurus–Littrow valley, each had a personal mission. Cernan was looking to gain the status of Moon-walker, which he had just missed in 1969 as lunar-module pilot on Apollo 10, the practice run for Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s successful landing with Apollo 11 a couple of months later.

Schmitt, meanwhile, was a geologist — still the only professional scientist to walk on the Moon. He had pushed NASA to continue the Apollo programme, arguing that humans could do better science than robot landers. The Moon’s ancient rocks, much less erased by tectonics than those of Earth, could hold the key to a new understanding of the Solar System.

Cernan and Schmitt spent 3 days in Taurus–Littrow, and more than 22 hours walking and driving around the valley’s landslides and volcanic cinder cones. They put more than 35 kilometres on the odometer of their lunar rover and picked up 110 kilograms of rocks to bring home, the biggest haul of any Apollo mission.

Then, late on 14 December, they parked the rover with its television camera pointing at the lander, to broadcast their departure. They left a plaque that read, in part, “Here man completed his first explorations of the moon, December 1972, A.D.”. After the greatest human voyage ever, deep-space exploration just — stopped.

Political drivers

The reasons lay, above all, in the shifting sands of politics. The Apollo programme was brought rousingly to life by US president John F. Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the Moon” speech in September 1962, when he promised that there would be US boots on the lunar soil by the end of the decade. It was a geopolitical prestige project, a response to the country falling behind in the cold war space race. In 1957, the Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. It had also put the first man into orbit — Yuri Gagarin in 1961, just the previous year.

But less than a year after the United States achieved the first successful Moon landing, the axe fell on Apollo. The demise was triggered when, in April 1970, an oxygen tank exploded two days after the launch of the Apollo 13 mission, threatening the lives of the astronauts on board. Missions after Apollo 17 were cancelled. But this was something of a pretext. Apollo was ruinously expensive, and by the late 1960s it was clear that the United States was comfortably ahead in the race. US president Richard Nixon, who took office in 1969, needed to do something with NASA that Kennedy had not.

The crew of Apollo 17, the last mission to land on the Moon, took this iconic photograph of Earth in 1972. Credit: NASA

Money and attention began to shift to low Earth orbit. NASA launched the Skylab space station in 1973, and fired the boosters on its space-shuttle programme. It aimed to establish a permanent human presence in space — but a few hundred kilometres up, not roughly 400,000 kilometres away on the Moon. Space became a rare symbol of cold war cooperation. In 1975, the United States and Soviet Union orchestrated a real and symbolic in-orbit handshake when an Apollo module docked with a Soyuz one and astronauts met cosmonauts. By 1998, with the launch of the International Space Station, the two had entered permanent cohabitation in space.

Nature special: 50 years since the Apollo Moon landing

And there, in low Earth orbit, things have stayed. Members of Congress have kept alive dreams of a US return to deep space by funnelling funds to their districts for aerospace jobs. But the momentum has never been fully regained. In 1989, on the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11, president George H. W. Bush announced an expensive push to return to the Moon and travel on to Mars. This ended four years later, the absence of a space race depriving it of great political support. In 2004, president George W. Bush tried again, with a more modest proposal for renewed lunar exploration. That came a year after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, killing its crew of seven and signalling the beginning of the end for the shuttle programme. This Bush plan got enough traction for NASA to begin building a new generation of Moon rockets — before president Barack Obama cancelled the programme in 2010, citing cost.

Then, the cycle was broken. In 2017, during Donald Trump’s presidency, Republican space-policy advisers crafted a fresh plan to return astronauts to the Moon. Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator at the time, championed the programme and named it Artemis, after the ancient Greek goddess of the Moon, sister to the Sun god Apollo. For whatever reason, Joe Biden kept it on when he became president in 2021.

Science and strategy

To be sure, there are renewed scientific imperatives to return to the Moon. In the 1990s, researchers using orbiting spacecraft discovered frozen water on the lunar surface, showing that it was not bone-dry as once thought. That water could reveal secrets of the Solar System’s history – as well as being one thing we wouldn’t have to transport to a permanent lunar base.

But the sort of science that motivated Schmitt is the least of the reasons behind the renewed push. Technology and politics are again pertinent. Artemis is hugely expensive, projected to cost US$93 billion by 2025, but so far the costs are building slowly enough that members of Congress are allowing NASA small annual budget increases for it. The rise of powerful private companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, has brought new public enthusiasm for space exploration, as well as new ways of delivering it. NASA has contracted SpaceX to deliver Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface using the enormous Starship, with which Musk dreams of colonizing Mars.

The Orion capsule, shown during the Artemis I mission, could soon return people to the Moon. Credit: ESA/NASA

And then there is the looming influence of China, which has just finished building the main phase of its first space station and might be planning to land astronauts on the Moon in the 2030s. To the more hawkish members of the US Congress, sending astronauts to other worlds is once again a geopolitical statement. A not-insignificant reason for the revival of human space exploration is that it is once more being seen as a space race.

Some remain unconvinced that Artemis is fit for purpose. Critics such as Lori Garver, a former NASA deputy administrator, says the agency could move faster and more nimbly in its partnerships with aerospace companies. Many would prefer NASA to forget deep space and spend more time and money on Earth, including space-based climate monitoring. Such comments echo criticisms from the 1960s, when much of the US public wanted the government to focus not on the space race, but on Earth-bound problems such as civil rights.

Lift off! Artemis Moon rocket launch kicks off new era of human exploration

Despite those criticisms, the launch of the Artemis I mission on 16 November has given the programme a huge boost. NASA’s new Moon rocket — a Frankenstein’s creature cobbled together from previous rocket programmes, including the one started by George W. Bush — sent the as-yet uncrewed Orion capsule to orbit the Moon, to see how it would hold up in the hostile environment of deep space. The second Artemis mission should fly around the Moon no earlier than 2024, this time with astronauts on board. The third mission will land people on the Moon — including the first woman and the first person of colour.

What permanent significance that will have is anyone’s guess. But it does mean that, after half a century, we are finally recapturing some of the wonders of human space exploration. We are once again seeing live streams from lunar orbit — not from a robotic orbiter, but from a capsule that is steered remotely by humans and will one day carry them. We are seeing the pale blue dot of Earth, in the cold depths of interplanetary space, in real time, contextualizing our fragile presence on a vulnerable planet. These might be smaller steps for humankind than they once seemed — but they are steps, nevertheless.

Nature 612 , 397-399 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04425-6

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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Missions to the moon: Past, present and future

The moon is a popular destination.

Moon mission FAQs

Nasa missions to the moon, international missions to the moon, expert q&a, additional resources, bibliography.

The moon is the closest major destination to Earth, so it's no surprise it's one of the most popular targets for space exploration missions. 

NASA and numerous other countries have attempted to send missions to the moon , and even a few humans have made the journey. 

The first generation of robotic moon explorers helped prepare for the Apollo moon landings, which sent a few American male astronauts to the surface between 1969 and 1972. Now NASA is leading a new consortium of international space agencies and companies for a new round of landings under the Artemis program . Meanwhile, numerous landers, rovers and other robotic explorers have sent back information about the moon.

Read more about notable moon missions below, and check out a full list of missions from The Planetary Society.

Related: Apollo landing sites: An observer's guide on how to spot them on the moon

How many missions to the moon have there been?

More than 140 missions launched to the moon. A small number of them had astronauts on board, but most of the missions were robotic orbiters, landers and rovers.

How many times have humans visited the moon?

Nine human missions were launched to the moon between 1968 and 1972, with some people flying on more than one mission. As for moonwalkers, 12 American male astronauts walked on the moon between 1968 and 1972.

Dozens of NASA missions have launched to the moon, but here are a few of the memorable ones:

Pioneer, Ranger, Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter missions

NASA's early moon explorers included several missions of the Pioneer, Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter series. Given that they were quite early in space exploration, several of the mission attempts failed as engineers learned how to create spacecraft. Notable missions include Pioneer 4's lunar flyby in 1959, Ranger 7's deliberate impact on the moon in 1964, Surveyor 1's soft landing in 1966 and Lunar Orbiter's successful orbital insertion in 1966.

Apollo missions

NASA sent nine missions to the moon with humans on board between 1968 and 1972. Apollo 8 was the first to orbit the moon in December 1968. Apollo 10 did a simulated moon landing in May 1969, while Apollo 11 made the landing with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on board in July 1969. Apollos 12 through 17 brought people to the moon between 1969 and 1972. All landed astronauts with the exception of Apollo 13 , which suffered an explosion on the way in April 1970 and made a successful and safe abort back to Earth .

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter 

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been mapping the moon in high definition since 2009. It has a global map of the moon that is continually updated as new craters and missions arrive. LRO has helped find reservoirs of water ice and is now serving as a pathfinder for future moon-landing missions, including those of the Artemis program.

Artemis human missions

NASA is preparing to send humans back to the moon with the Artemis program. The uncrewed Artemis 1 circled the moon in December 2022 with three mannequins, a clutch of tree seeds and numerous experiments, payloads and CubeSats. Artemis 2 is expected to go around the moon with a crew of four people in November 2024 or so, including three NASA astronauts ( Reid Wiseman , Christina Koch and Victor Glover ) and a Canadian astronaut ( Jeremy Hansen ). Artemis 3 will attempt a landing at the moon's south pole in 2025 or 2026 aboard a SpaceX Starship, with future missions following to the surface and the planned Gateway space station. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are eligible to deliver human landers for future missions.

Artemis 1 cubesats

Artemis 1 launched 10 Artemis 1 cubesats built by a variety of entities. These satellites were considered experimental payloads. A few of them failed or experienced issues along the way, but they served as good demonstrators for how to operate tiny spacecraft far from Earth.

Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program

Several NASA-funded private missions received money under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program that is aiming to bring rovers, landers and science experiments to the moon. CLPS will support the Artemis astronauts in their work on the surface.

Gateway and Capstone

NASA plans to launch a Gateway space station to the moon later in the 2020s using contributions from international partners that have signed on under the Artemis Accords . A cubesat mission known as Capstone is testing the unique orbit of Gateway ahead of time to ensure the path's stability. Should all go to plan, Gateway's orbit will see it swing close to the south pole to deliver astronauts and payloads, then far away on the opposite side.

Related: NASA's Gateway moon-orbiting space station explained in pictures

Many countries and companies have attempted moon missions over the last few decades. Here are a few of the memorable ones.

The Soviet Union

The Luna series made several flybys of the moon, starting in 1960. Zond 3, which flew by the moon's far side in 1965, and took photographs of a the largely unknown area. Zond 5 flew around the moon in 1968 with a "biological payload", including two small Steppe tortoises that survived the journey back to Earth. Luna 9 made the first soft touchdown on the lunar surface in 1966, while Luna 16 did the first robotic sample return in 1970. The first robotic lunar rover, Lunokhod 1, was deployed with Luna 17 in 1970; the successor Lunokhod 2 lasted even longer and drove 24 miles (39 kilometers) on the surface.

Other international moon missions

Japan launched its first mission (Clementine) in 1990, making it the third country to explore the moon. Other firsts included: Europe's SMART-1 in 2003, China's Chang'e-1 in 2007, India's Chandrayaan-1 in 2008, and Israel's Beresheet by private company Space IL that crashed upon landing in 2019. India's Chandrayaan-1 is also remembered for being the first mission to discover moon ice. China's Chang'e-3 delivered the Yutu rover to the near side of the moon in 2013, while Chang'e-4 and Yutu 2 together made the first lunar farside lander in 2019. (China wants to land humans on the moon independently at some point, too.) A private company from Japan, ispace, made an attempted moon landing in April 2023 that ended in an apparent crash .

  Japanese billionaire and International Space Station tourist Yusaku Maezawa announced on Dec. 8, 2022, the eight artists (and two backups) he plans to take with him on a SpaceX Starship spacecraft to fly around the moon. A flight date has not yet been announced. The selected individuals include Tim Dodd, host and founder of the "Everyday Astronaut", a YouTube channel that covers space news.

Related: Artemis Accords: What are they & which countries are involved?

Bill Nelson is the 14th NASA administrator as of May 3, 2021, after decades of space advocacy in Congress. He chaired the space and science subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives for six years and the U.S. Senate for 12 years. He was also a ranking member of the full Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Nelson flew to space as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Columbia on the STS-61-C mission in January 1986, under a temporary initiative to bring spacefaring politicians to orbit.

Why are we going back to the moon?

We're going to live and learn and develop new technologies because we're eventually going to Mars . The goal was set by President Barack Obama. He gave a date, 2033, but it's more likely now that we'll see that landing on Mars late in the decade of the 2030s.

What makes Artemis different from Apollo?

This is the next step in that exploration, so this time we go with our international partners. Indeed, our international partners are many and you see on Artemis 1, for example, the European service module supporting operations on the Orion spacecraft .

Why is international cooperation on the moon important?

The Artemis Accords are setting the standards for how we're going to conduct ourselves in space. We do so at a difficult time on the face of the Earth and in Ukraine, where the aggressive Russian president Vladimir Putin has a war going on there. And yet, on the space station with our Russian partners, the professional relationship doesn't miss a beat.

This Q&A is based on a press conference with NASA on Aug. 27, 2022. It has been edited and condensed.

Read about all the missions to the moon at the Planetary Society . A huge table of moon missions is also available at NASA .

Canadian Space Agency. (2023, April 3). The Artemis Program: Humanity's return to the Moon. https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/moon-exploration/artemis-missions.asp  

European Space Agency. (n.d.) Artemis I. https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Orion/Artemis_I  

Lunar and Planetary Institute. (2023). Lunar Mission Summaries. https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/  

NASA. (2023, April 18). Artemis Program. https://www.nasa.gov/artemisprogram  

NASA. (2019, Feb. 1). The Apollo Missions. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/index.html  

SpaceX. (2023). The Moon: Returning Humans to Lunar Missions. https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/moon/  

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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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NASA's Artemis II Astronauts Highlights From NASA’s Reveal of the Artemis II Moon Astronauts

The crew of three Americans and one Canadian will be the first humans to fly toward the moon in more than 50 years.

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Kenneth Chang

NASA’s Artemis II astronauts reflect a wider swath of society.

HOUSTON — For the first time in more than half a century, NASA has named a crew of astronauts headed to the moon.

Humans have not ventured more than a few hundred miles off the planet since the return of Apollo 17, NASA’s last moon mission, in 1972. After Artemis’s experience on the moon, NASA hopes to chart a path to putting humans on Mars, while scientists expect to use what is found there to answer questions about how the solar system formed.

Astronauts in 2023 are much different from those when the United States was in a race to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. During the Apollo program, 24 astronauts flew to the moon, and 12 of them stepped on the surface. All of them were Americans. All of them were white men, many of whom were test pilots.

This time, the astronaut corps reflects a much wider swath of society.

They are Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander; Victor Glover, the pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and, Jeremy Hansen, also a mission specialist. The first three are NASA astronauts, while Mr. Hansen is a member of the Canadian Space Agency.

“When we were selecting astronauts back then,” Mr. Glover said in an interview, “we intended to select the same person, just multiple copies.”

Ms. Koch will be the first woman to venture beyond low-Earth orbit, and Mr. Hansen, as a Canadian, the first non-American to travel that far.

“So am I excited?” Ms. Koch said during an event unveiling the crew at Ellington Field, a small airport used by NASA for the training of astronauts. “Absolutely. But my real question is: are you excited?”

The assembled crowd cheered in response.

The mission is a major step in NASA’s Artemis program to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon to explore the cold regions near the moon’s south pole. Water ice found in deep dark craters there could supply water and oxygen for future astronauts as well as fuel for missions deeper into space.

“Together, we are going — to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond,” said Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator.

But the four astronauts aboard this next mission, Artemis II, will not land on the moon.

Instead, the travelers will take a 10-day journey that will swing around the moon and come back to Earth. It is currently scheduled for late next year.

“It’s an exciting time for the Artemis people, no question about it,” Harrison Schmitt, the last surviving astronaut from Apollo 17, said in an interview. He added that many people did not “fully realize that we’re about three generations away from any experience with human beings being in deep space, and that’s probably the most important part of the mission.”

Dr. Schmitt, who is also a former United States senator from New Mexico, said he was not necessarily surprised that it had taken so long. “I would say I’m disappointed,” he said. “A lot of things conspired to stop the Apollo program and to keep us from going back for quite a while.”

Mr. Hansen noted that the United States could have undertaken the Artemis missions by itself but instead chose to pull together an international collaboration with Canada and the European Space Agency. That agreement reserved a seat for a Canadian astronaut on Artemis II. “All of Canada is grateful for that global mind-set and that leadership,” Mr. Hansen said.

Mr. Glover, who was the first Black man to serve as a crew member on the International Space Station, said that diversity was “an important aim of the agency and our partners.” “But it was also going to happen organically because of the corps that we have that represents America so well,” he said.

As the name of the mission indicates, Artemis II will be the second in NASA’s Artemis program. Artemis I launched last November as an uncrewed test of the Space Launch System, NASA’s giant new rocket, and the Orion astronaut capsule. The Orion spacecraft spent two weeks in orbit around the moon before returning to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific.

After years of delay — development of the rocket took longer than originally promised — the Artemis I mission progressed smoothly for the most part, although some problems occurred. The heat shield of Orion protected the spacecraft during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, but more of it came off than had been expected.

Artemis II, with four astronauts aboard, will allow a full check of the Orion’s life support systems. Then NASA officials will feel more confident in undertaking the longer, more complex Artemis III mission, which will include two astronauts landing near the south pole.

Mr. Wiseman, Mr. Glover and Ms. Koch all said they were not disappointed that being part of the Artemis II crew rules out the possibility of walking on the moon during Artemis III.

“This is going to probably sound cliché,” Mr. Wiseman said, “but just flying on any of these missions is an enormous thing. It’s fantastic. I love the idea of going out past the moon.”

He added, “Watching our astronaut colleagues walk on the moon will be a success for us.”

After a long afternoon of interviews with reporters, the four astronauts left the Johnson Space Center, accompanied by a police escort, to NRG Stadium in Houston to watch the NCAA men’s basketball championship game between the University of Connecticut and San Diego State University.

NASA is currently aiming for that first moon landing to occur in late 2025, but the NASA inspector general has predicted the mission would slip to 2026 or later. The Artemis III mission requires the use of Starship — the giant spacecraft being developed by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company — to take the two astronauts from a distant lunar orbit to the surface. The first test launch of Starship to space might take off in the coming weeks.

In the 1960s, the space race reflected the geopolitical jousting between the United States and the Soviet Union. Once the race was won, interest in the moon by the public, politicians and even NASA waned.

There are some geopolitical echoes this time too. China is also aiming to send astronauts to the moon in the coming years. But it is not just governments aiming for the moon now.

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, has bought a trip on Starship that would loop around the moon similar to the trajectory that Artemis II will take. Dennis Tito, an entrepreneur who was the first space tourist to visit the International Space Station in 2001, and his wife, Akiko, have booked seats on a separate Starship trip around the moon.

Five decades ago, that would have been like a billionaire buying a Saturn V, the rocket that propelled the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Today, it seems almost inevitable that the footprints of tourists will crisscross the lunar surface in the years to come.

In an interview, Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who retired in 2013 after three trips to space, compared space travel to the early days of aviation. The wobbly craft that the Wright Brothers built in 1903 flew, but barely. But progress was fast. The first flight for KLM, the Dutch airline, was in 1920.

“Seventeen years from the Wright brothers to a profitable airline that’s still around,” Mr. Hadfield said.

He added that innovation had greatly reduced the cost of leaving Earth.

“You can see that the cost is going to keep coming down as the vehicles get better proven, and that’s going to increase the access and opportunity,” Mr. Hadfield said.

For the Artemis II astronauts, Dr. Schmitt offered some simple advice: “Just enjoy it,” he said.

Vjosa Isai and Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.

Michael Roston

A busy year ahead on the moon.

You’ll have to wait until at least the end of 2024 for the astronauts of Artemis II to launch toward the moon. But our lunar neighbor could get several new robotic visitors in 2023.

The first moon landing attempt of the year is expected to occur at the end of April. Ispace, a private Japanese company, launched its M1 robotic lander in December , carrying cargo built by the space agencies of Japan and the United Arab Emirates. The spacecraft reached lunar orbit on March 21 and the company has yet to announce the date of its landing attempt.

Landing on the moon is perilous, and attempts by India and an Israeli nonprofit ended in crashes in 2019. If Ispace succeeds in touching down on the moon’s surface in one piece, it will be the first private lunar mission to do so.

If it fails, two American companies will instead vie for the first private lunar landing. They are both participants in a program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS , in which NASA pays private businesses to send experiments to the surface to the moon.

The first two missions, from Intuitive Machines of Houston and Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, plan to launch during the year after considerable delays. Astrobotic’s spacecraft, lofted by the new Vulcan Centaur rocket, could launch in May and head to the northeast border of the Ocean of Storms on the moon’s near side. Intuitive Machines’ lander, which could be launched as early as late June on a SpaceX rocket, will head to the lunar south pole. NASA selected both landing sites for their science value for future Artemis missions.

Private companies won’t be the only visitors to the moon in 2023. Three government space programs’ lunar missions also intend to head there. India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission was delayed last year but could be ready in the summer. A Japanese mission, Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, aims to test the country’s lunar landing technologies, but could be delayed because of a problem with its rocket. Finally, Russia’s Luna-25 mission was postponed from last September, but Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, may try this year.

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Joshua Sokol

It’s been more than 50 years since astronauts visited the moon.

On Dec. 14, 1972, two men woke up on humanity’s last day on the moon.

Nobody would be back to the moon anytime soon. Plans for additional Apollo missions had been scrapped two years earlier. A few minutes ahead of their scheduled wake-up time, two NASA astronauts, Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, called home from Apollo 17’s smelly, dust-strewn lunar module to croon “Good morning to you” down to Earth. Mission Control responded with a blast of “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”

Their formal goodbyes had already been delivered to the TV cameras. The only thing left to do was to work down a few prelaunch checklists, depart to meet with Ronald E. Evans in the command module and then head home to Earth. “Now, let’s get off,” Cernan said, and so they did, their craft climbing up from the moon’s gray desolation until it was lost in a black sky.

While many Americans in 2019 celebrated the 50 years after Apollo 11 first put Neil and Buzz on the moon, the recent 50th anniversary of the conclusion of Apollo 17 carried more than a twinge of sadness for fans of space exploration. For a brief few years, the Earth and moon were linked by a bridge built through ingenuity, technology and vast sums of taxpayer money.

Countless imaginary space futures had blossomed out from this point: spinning space stations, boots on Mars, humanity reaching toward the edge of the solar system. Then it all went up in one last plume of rocket exhaust.

A half-century later, disagreements persist about why we go to the moon. Or how. Or whether we should even try. Yet it’s hard to see the imagery that was beamed home to Earth from the Artemis I mission to the moon last November and December and not feel something.

“There’s only 24 people in the history of the world who’ve seen the full circle of the earth, and they’re all Americans,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a call with Mr. Hansen, shared on YouTube. “Well, you will be the first Canadian, the first non-American. This is a big deal.”

Artemis III and beyond.

If Artemis II is successful, it will set up the biggest event in human spaceflight since the 1970s: Artemis III, a mission that will send astronauts to the lunar surface.

That is currently scheduled for no earlier than December 2025, and NASA has not yet named the astronauts who will be aboard that flight. NASA has promised that mission would include the first woman to walk on the moon. (The agency has also said that a future moonw mission will include the first person of color, but that is not promised for Artemis III.)

During the Apollo moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s, a lunar lander was packed into the Saturn V rocket. The lander for Artemis III will be a version of a Starship rocket built by SpaceX. The lunar Starship will be launched separately. Additional Starships would then launch to refill the propellant tanks of the lunar Starship before it left Earth orbit.

At the moon, the Starship lander will enter what is known as a near-rectilinear halo orbit, or N.R.H.O.

Halo orbits are influenced by the gravities of two bodies — in this case, the Earth and the moon — which help to make the orbit highly stable, minimizing the amount of propellant needed to keep a spacecraft circling the moon. A spacecraft in this orbit also never passes behind the moon, where communications with Earth are cut off.

Once Starship is in orbit around the moon, the Space Launch System rocket will send four astronauts in an Orion capsule to the same near-rectilinear halo orbit. The Orion will dock with the Starship. Two astronauts will move to the Starship rocket, landing near the moon’s South Pole, while the other two astronauts will remain in orbit in Orion.

After about a week on the surface, the two moon-walking astronauts will blast off in Starship and rendezvous with Orion in orbit. Orion will then take the four astronauts back to Earth.

Last August, NASA announced 13 potential landing sites near the moon’s south pole.

There will then be a lull until at least September 2028 when the astronauts aboard Artemis IV will head to Gateway, a space station-like outpost that NASA will build in the same near-rectilinear halo orbit used for Artemis III. That mission will use a Space Launch System rocket with an upgraded second stage, providing enough power to take along Gateway’s habitat module.

Originally, NASA planned for Artemis IV to focus on the construction of Gateway. It has since decided that the mission would also include a trip to the lunar surface. Last month, NASA announced SpaceX would provide the lander for Artemis IV.

For Artemis V and later missions, the lunar lander will be docked at Gateway. Astronauts will arrive at the Gateway on Orion, then move to the lander for the journey to the lunar surface.

NASA is now considering bids for a different company to provide the lander for Artemis V.

Among the companies that may be bidding to build a competing lander are Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

NASA would then run a competition for future lunar landers similar to how it hired companies to take cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.

How 3 NASA Missions Could Send Astronauts Back to the Moon

By the end of this decade, humans could walk on the moon once again. Here’s how NASA plans to send them there.

Why NASA is trying to return to the moon.

Why should NASA repeat what it did half a century ago?

NASA officials argue that the moon missions are central to its human spaceflight program — not simply a do-over of the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972.

“It’s a future where NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference in 2022. “And on these increasingly complex missions, astronauts will live and work in deep space and will develop the science and technology to send the first humans to Mars.”

NASA is also hoping to jump-start companies looking to set up a steady business of flying scientific instruments and other payloads to the moon and to inspire students to enter science and engineering fields.

For scientists, the renewed focus on the moon promises a bonanza of new data in the coming years. There is a particular interest in the amount of water ice on the moon, which could be used for astronauts’ water and oxygen supplies in the future and could provide fuel for missions deeper into space.

Scientists do not really know how much water is on the moon or how easy it will be to extract the water from the surrounding rock and soil. Future missions could help to resolve that question.

Jesus Jimenez

President Biden shared a video on Twitter of a phone call with the Artemis II crew and their families. “The world just holds their breath when things like this happen,” Mr. Biden said. “The work you’re doing is going to inspire countless people around our country and the world.”

Outsize contributions earn Canada a ride to the moon.

The space program in Canada may not have a whopping budget, but it does have one thing that other countries don’t: a spot aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon.

Jeremy Hansen, an astronaut from London, Ontario, will join three Americans on Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years.

“I think it’s a really nice reflection of the long partnership between Canada and the United States,” said Chris Hadfield , who joined NASA on three missions to orbit, performed the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut and commanded the International Space Station before retiring.

Mr. Hansen, 47, praised American leadership and the work of Canada’s scientists, engineers, military and government after he was introduced at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday.

“All of our leadership, working together under a vision,” that he said went “step by step.” He said those efforts “added up to this moment where a Canadian is going to the moon with our international partnership, and it is glorious.”

The Canadian Space Agency secured Mr. Hansen’s spot in 2020 through an agreement with NASA. Canada committed to provide a robotic arm called the Canadarm3 for Gateway , an American-led outpost that is to orbit the moon.

“There’s only 24 people in the history of the world who’ve seen the full circle of the earth, and they’re all Americans,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an animated call with Mr. Hansen, shared on YouTube . “Well, you will be the first Canadian, the first non-American. This is a big deal.”

Canada was the first country to back Gateway in 2019, building on its expertise in robotic arms such as the Canadarm2, which has been used by astronauts on the International Space Station since 2011. The next-generation robotic system, Canadarm3 , will use artificial intelligence to automate tasks like moving tools around the Gateway outpost and conducting repairs.

This complex engineering feat will be bolstered by part of the 2.5 billion Canadian dollars announced in the federal budget last week. Roughly 1.1 billion of those funds will support the country’s presence at the International Space Station until 2023. The government is also committing 1.2 billion dollars toward a lunar utility vehicle to help astronauts on the moon.

Still, the government’s spending lags behind other countries.

“Canada has always punched above its weight when you look at the relatively small space budget we have,” said Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist at Western University in London, Ontario, who is training potential Artemis astronauts in geology.

Mr. Hadfield said Canada’s ties to the American space program go back decades, to the launch of the Canadian-built Alouette 1 satellite on an American rocket. Canada was the third country, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to get a satellite to orbit.

Canada’s space work force employs more than 10,000 people. About one-third of companies in the sector reported hiring challenges for skilled positions, but it has seen bustling activity in commercialization despite an 11 percent dip in revenues from government-funded projects in 2019, according to a Canadian Space Agency report .

Some of the companies making waves in the sector are fairly new. Canadensys Aerospace Corporation, founded in 2013, was recently awarded the contract to build Canada’s first moon rover and could launch as soon as 2026.

Dr. Osinski, who is also the principal investigator for that rover mission, said he’s “incredibly excited” about the Monday announcement.

“To think that out of all the countries on Earth, we’ll have a Canadian onboard Artemis II,” he said, noting that Canada would be only the second country to send a person into deep space. “It’s a big day.”

Kenneth Chang contributed reporting.

“Your role in carrying out America’s effort in space will be one of high inspiration,” Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 astronaut who walked on the moon, said in a post on Twitter congratulating the Artemis II crew.

How the Artemis II astronauts will get to the moon.

The orion spacecraft.

CREW module

Can hold four people

launch abort system

Can carry the crew module to safety if there is an emergency during launch

Solar arrays

service module

Provides power and propulsion to the crew module

abort system

When the four astronauts of Artemis II orbit the moon in 2024 or later, they’ll be sitting in a spacecraft called Orion.

The Orion capsule is designed for trips that last weeks in deep space, beyond low-Earth orbit where humanity has loitered for half a century since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. Orion, while bigger than the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that takes astronauts to the International Space Station, has a bit less space on the inside to make room for more robust systems to meet all of NASA’s requirements including robust life support systems.

But Orion can’t get to the moon on its own. Astronauts will need a big rocket, in the form of the Space Launch System — the most powerful one since Saturn V took NASA astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the one that lifted Artemis I in November, the rocket will be 322 feet tall and weigh 5.5 million pounds when filled with propellants.

It will be able to lift more than 200,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit and send nearly 60,000 pounds of payload to the moon.

S.L.S. resembles a stretched external tank that was used by the retired space shuttles, and the side boosters are longer versions that were attached to the shuttle’s external tank.

This is by design: To simplify the development of its new moon rocket, NASA reused much of its 1970s space shuttle technology. The rocket’s central stage is the same 27.6-foot diameter as the 1970s shuttle’s external tank, and it is covered with the same orange insulation.

The four engines in the core stage are the same as the space shuttle main engines. In fact, the first three Artemis missions will actually use engines that were pulled from the old shuttles and refurbished. But because none of the S.L.S. rockets will be used more than once, NASA will run out of old shuttle engines after Artemis IV and need new ones for Artemis V and later.

During the shuttle era, NASA recovered and reused the side rocket boosters. For the Space Launch System, which will launch infrequently, the agency decided it would be easier and more economical to let the boosters sink into the ocean and use new ones for each flight.

The second stage of the S.L.S. is essentially a modification of the one used for another rocket called Delta IV. A new upgraded second stage will be used for Artemis IV, making the rocket even more powerful.

Development of the Orion crew capsule started in 2006 as part of Constellation, an earlier moon program started under President George W. Bush. Costs for Constellation soared, and the Obama administration tried to cancel it entirely in 2010.

However, Congress rebelled against that decision, leading to a revival of Orion and the creation of the Space Launch System, which largely resembles Ares V, the heavy-lift rocket that was planned for Constellation.

Mr. Wiseman wraps up the event asking everyone in the crowd to say “We are going!” a mantra of the Artemis II crew.

The Canadian Space Agency congratulated Jeremy Hansen on making the crew, in a statement on Twitter. “Your trailblazing is an inspiration to us all!”

“We are going to carry all of your excitement, your aspirations, your dreams,” Ms. Koch said.

“Am I excited? Absolutely,” Ms. Koch said.

“All of Canada is grateful,” Mr. Hansen said, recognizing the United States for its partnership on this next mission.

Reid Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, then took the microphone and introduced Victor Glover, the mission's pilot.“This is a big day. We have a lot to celebrate,” Mr. Glover said. “We need to celebrate this moment in human history.” He added that spaceflight is a relay race, with each crew handing off to the next one.

“I saw the power of the blue suit,” said Mr. Champagne, sharing a story about how he watched Jeremy Hansen talk with students visiting the Kennedy Space Center. “You have been inspiring not only us today, but keep inspiring humanity,” he said. “To you Jeremy, go Canada!”

“It’s what you were meant to be,” Mr. Knight said to Mr. Wiseman.

“Your relentless drive is unmatched,” Norm Knight said to Christina Koch onstage.

Kenneth Chang and Jesus Jiménez

Meet the four astronauts of Artemis II.

NASA on Monday announced a crew of four astronauts who will head to the moon within the next two years. The crew will travel around the moon and back on a 10-day mission.

The four astronauts are: Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman of NASA, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

Reid Wiseman, commander

Until recently, G. Reid Wiseman, 47, served as NASA’s chief astronaut, meaning that he would have been responsible for selecting the four astronauts that flew on Artemis II. But he stepped down from that post last November, and became eligible for assignment to the moon-bound crews of the Artemis missions.

Selected as part of the 2009 astronaut class, Mr. Wiseman, a captain in the United States Navy, spent 165 days in orbit at the International Space Station in 2014. Before joining NASA, he served two deployments in the Middle East.

Victor Glover, pilot

Victor J. Glover, Jr., 46, was the pilot of the first operational mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station from November 2020 to May 2021. He spent 168 days on the space station. He was the first Black man assigned as a crew member on the station — and participated in four spacewalks. Mr. Glover, a captain in the United States Navy, was selected to be an astronaut in 2013.

Originally from Pomona, Calif., Mr. Glover graduated with a bachelor’s degree in general engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 1999. From 2007 through 2010, he earned three master’s degrees: in flight test engineering, systems engineering and military operational art and science.

Mr. Glover is often referred to by his counterparts as Ike, a nod to a call sign a former commanding officer gave him that stands for “I know everything.”

Christina Koch, mission specialist

Christina H. Koch, 44, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman — 328 days — and she, with another active astronaut, Jessica Meir, performed the first three all-women spacewalks in 2019 and 2020. She also conducted three other spacewalks. Her six spacewalks totaled 42 hours and 15 minutes.

Before being selected as an astronaut in 2013, Ms. Koch worked as an electrical engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. She later became a researcher in the United States Antarctic Program, which included a yearlong stay at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Other places she has worked include the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spending time in Alaska and American Samoa.

Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist

Jeremy Hansen is one of four active Canadian astronauts. He was selected by the Canadian Space Agency to be an astronaut in 2009. He is 47 years old and was born in Ontario.

Col. Hansen, who served as a fighter pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces, has yet to fly to space. In his time representing the Canadian Space Agency at NASA, he has served as a capsule communicator between mission control in Houston and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. He was also the first Canadian tasked with leading an astronaut class.

Wiseman had been chief of the astronaut office but stepped down so that he could be assigned to one of the Artemis missions.

And the commander of Artemis II is Reid Wiseman.

Victor Glover will be the pilot.

Jeremy Hansen, from Canada is the other mission specialist for Artemis II.

Christina Koch is the first to be named.

François-Philippe Champagne, the minister in charge of Canada’s space ageny, took the stage and delivered animated remarks on Canada's cooperation in the Artemis program. “Indeed 50 years after the end of the Apollo missions, we are going back through the moon!” he said, recalling the close partnership between Canada and the U.S.

Mr. Acaba noted that they are not hiding the Artemis II crew backstage — they crossed the stage with the others and are mixed in with the blue jumpsuit-clad astronaut corps.

Joe Acaba, chief of the astronaut office, and Norm Knight, director of the flight operations directorate, are serving as emcees. The entire astronaut corps (at the least ones not in orbit) are crossing the stage to handshakes, hugs and high-fives.

Moon Missions

Here are the major missions launched to the Moon. In addition to these missions, there have been CubeSats, small satellites that tend to launch as additional payloads with larger spacecraft.

Key to tables: All times are in UTC. Unless otherwise indicated, missions were launched by the space agencies of the indicated nation's government.

1950s: Dawn of the Space Age

1960s: Race to the Moon

1970s: Sampling the Moon

1980s: Quiet Moon

No lunar missions were launched in this decade.

1990s: Robots Return

2000s: International Moon

2010s: Delving Deeper

2020s: Back to the Surface

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1969 Moon Landing

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 17, 2023 | Original: August 23, 2018

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.

JFK's Pledge Leads to Start of Apollo Program

The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in an appeal President Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." 

At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War -era America welcomed Kennedy's bold proposal. In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission , testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination. 

Then, on January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire.

President Richard Nixon spoke with Armstrong and Aldrin via a telephone radio transmission shortly after they planted the American flag on the lunar surface. Nixon considered it the "most historic phone call ever made from the White House."

Despite the setback, NASA and its thousands of employees forged ahead, and in October 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing. 

In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the far side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. That May, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled July landing mission.

Timeline of the 1969 Moon Landing

At 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins (1930-) aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission.

After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:17 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a now-famous message: "The Eagle has landed."

At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the module's ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation.

At 10:56 p.m., as Armstrong stepped off the ladder and planted his foot on the moon’s powdery surface, he spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface 19 minutes later, and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests and spoke with President Richard Nixon (1913-94) via Houston. 

By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon—July 1969 A.D.—We came in peace for all mankind."

At 5:35 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at 12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:50 p.m. on July 24.

How Many Times Did the US Land on the Moon?

There would be five more successful lunar landing missions, and one unplanned lunar swing-by. Apollo 13 had to abort its lunar landing due to technical difficulties. The last men to walk on the moon, astronauts Eugene Cernan (1934-2017) and Harrison Schmitt (1935-) of the Apollo 17 mission, left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972. 

The Apollo program was a costly and labor-intensive endeavor, involving an estimated 400,000 engineers, technicians and scientists, and costing $24 billion (close to $100 billion in today's dollars). The expense was justified by Kennedy's 1961 mandate to beat the Soviets to the moon, and after the feat was accomplished, ongoing missions lost their viability.

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HISTORY Vault: Moon Landing: The Lost Tapes

On the 50th anniversary of the historic moon landing, this documentary unearths lost tapes of the Apollo 11 astronauts, and explores the dangers and challenges of the mission to the moon.

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NASA’s Orion capsule slingshots around moon, last big step before lunar orbit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Orion capsule reached the moon Monday, whipping around the far side and buzzing the lunar surface on its way to a record-breaking orbit with test dummies sitting in for astronauts.

It’s the first time a capsule has visited the moon since NASA’s Apollo program 50 years ago, and represents a huge milestone in the $4.1 billion test flight that began last Wednesday.

The close approach of 81 miles (130 kilometers) occurred as the crew capsule and its three wired-up dummies were on the far side of the moon. Because of a half-hour communication blackout, flight controllers in Houston did not know if the critical engine firing went well until the capsule emerged from behind the moon, 232,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) from Earth.

The capsule’s cameras sent back a picture of the world — a tiny blue orb surrounded by blackness.

“Our pale blue dot and its 8 billion human inhabitants now coming into view,” said Mission Control commentator Sandra Jones.

The capsule accelerated well beyond 5,000 mph (8,000 kph) as it regained radio contact, NASA said. Less than an hour later, Orion soared above Tranquility Base, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on July 20, 1969.

READ MORE: 3 things NASA is testing for its future moon base camp

“This is one of those days that you’ve been thinking about and talking about for a long, long time,” flight director Zeb Scoville said.

Earlier in the morning, the moon loomed ever larger in the video beamed back, as the capsule closed the final few thousand miles since blasting off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, atop the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA.

Orion needed to slingshot around the moon to pick up enough speed to enter the sweeping, lopsided lunar orbit. Flight controllers evaluated the data pouring back, to determine if the engine firing went as planned. Another firing will place the capsule in that elongated orbit Friday.

This coming weekend, Orion will shatter NASA’s distance record for a spacecraft designed for astronauts — nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth, set by Apollo 13 in 1970. And it will keep going, reaching a maximum distance from Earth next Monday at nearly 270,000 miles (433,000 kilometers).

The capsule will spend close to a week in lunar orbit, before heading home. A Pacific splashdown is planned for Dec. 11.

Orion has no lunar lander; a touchdown won’t come until NASA astronauts attempt a lunar landing in 2025 with SpaceX’s Starship. Before then, astronauts will strap into Orion for a ride around the moon as early as 2024.

NASA managers were delighted with the progress of the mission. The Space Launch System rocket performed exceedingly well in its debut, they told reporters late last week.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket caused more damage than expected, however, at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad. The force from the 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of liftoff thrust was so great that it tore off the blast doors of the elevator.

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Marketing maven Kelly Jones wreaks havoc on launch director Cole Davis's already difficult task. When the White House deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fa... Read all Marketing maven Kelly Jones wreaks havoc on launch director Cole Davis's already difficult task. When the White House deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fake moon landing as back-up. Marketing maven Kelly Jones wreaks havoc on launch director Cole Davis's already difficult task. When the White House deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fake moon landing as back-up.

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China launches Chang'e 6 lunar probe, revving up space race with U.S.

WENCHANG SPACE LAUNCH SITE, China — China launched an uncrewed lunar spacecraft Friday in a first-of-its-kind mission to bring back samples from the far side of the moon, the latest step in a rapidly advancing Chinese space program that is spurring competition with the United States and others. 

The Chang’e 6 lifted off on time at 5:27 p.m. local time (5:27 a.m. ET) from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China’s southern island province of Hainan.

The launch of the lunar probe, which NBC News was one of a handful of news organizations to attend, and the national excitement around it had transformed the normally sleepy fishing village of Longlou into a major tourist attraction, with crowds spilling from tour buses and heading to beaches and rooftops with the best views of the spaceport. One rooftop owner said he had sold out 200 seats at 200 yuan (about $28) each.

Ahead of the launch there was a festival-like atmosphere on the beach, where vendors offered space paraphernalia and groups of children sold Chinese flags for 3 yuan (about 40 cents) each. Families sprawled on picnic blankets playing cards, while others strung up hammocks between palm trees so they could wait in the limited shade.

Yiuwah Ng, a 28-year-old real estate office worker from the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, traveled six hours by car and another three hours by ferry to stake out the best spot along the shore, where he had been camping for three days with friends and his dog. 

“I want to witness this historic moment,” he said of the launch, his fourth. “It’s an important first step for China’s lunar exploration.”

Max Zhang, a self-described “rocket chaser” from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has been photographing launches at Wenchang from the beach since 2011. 

“I’m addicted to the shock of seeing the launches, especially the sound of the rocket flame,” he said. “It shakes my heart.”

‘ A force to be reckoned with’

If successful, the Chang’e mission will be a crucial step in realizing the country’s goals of landing Chinese astronauts on the moon by 2030 and eventually building a base on the lunar surface.

The outcome of the mission will also have implications far beyond China’s borders. A slew of spacefaring nations — including Russia, India, Japan and the U.S. — also have their sights set on the moon, creating what some experts have likened to a new kind of space race.

“China is trying to prove that it’s a force to be reckoned with, and so it’s always that China is competing against everyone in space,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

A successful Chang’e 6 mission would demonstrate how sophisticated China’s lunar exploration program has become in a relatively short time.

“Twenty-five years ago, they had very rudimentary space capabilities,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank based in Washington. “Going from that to where they are today — I think they’ve clearly exceeded Russia, and their space capabilities are really only second to the United States.”

China achieved its first moon landing in 2013 with the Chang’e 3 mission, which set a lander and rover on the lunar surface to study the moon’s terrain. Before that, only the U.S. and the former Soviet Union had successfully landed spacecraft on the moon.

In 2019, China notched another historic milestone with its Chang’e 4 flight, becoming the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon , the part that permanently faces away from Earth.

The following year, in 2020, China returned to the moon’s near side, which always faces Earth, landing the Chang’e 5 spacecraft on a volcanic plain known as Oceanus Procellarum. The probe retrieved samples there and brought them back to Earth, representing a big technological leap forward. 

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has invited scientists from the U.S., Europe and Asia to apply to borrow the lunar samples for their own research, holding a pitch meeting last week in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Researchers funded by NASA received rare approval from Congress to submit proposals, raising the possibility of high-level U.S.-China space cooperation that is otherwise prohibited by U.S. law.

This time, the Chang’e 6 spacecraft is aiming to land and retrieve samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, an ancient and sprawling impact crater on the far side of the moon.

Conducting a sample return mission from the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth is challenging because mission controllers on the ground have no way of directly contacting a spacecraft in that region. Instead, signals need to be relayed through a satellite now orbiting the moon that China launched from the same site in Hainan last month.

While difficult, the effort could have enormous payoffs. Studies suggest that the moon’s near side was more volcanically active than the far side, which means all of the lunar samples obtained thus far may be telling only part of the story of the moon’s origin and evolution.

Collecting lunar samples from different geological eras and regions “is of great value and significant for all mankind to have a more comprehensive understanding of the moon and even the origin of the solar system,” Ge Ping, a mission leader from CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, told reporters in Hainan on Thursday.

Beyond its scientific objectives, the Chang’e 6 mission carries with it geopolitical considerations. The flight is a precursor to a pair of Chinese robotic missions to the moon’s south pole to scout locations to build a moon base. Last year, the Chinese and Russian space agencies agreed to jointly build a research station on the lunar surface.

NASA and its commercial partners also aim to establish a permanent presence at the lunar south pole, though the agency’s Artemis moon missions have faced numerous delays and budget overruns . The current timeline has American astronauts returning to the lunar surface in 2026 at the earliest.

With China and Russia forming a rival coalition, there is some pressure for the U.S. to keep its foot on the accelerator, Harrison said.

“It does matter who gets there first, and it matters how you get there and what kind of coalition you’re bringing with you,” he said.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has on multiple occasions warned that the U.S. runs the risk of falling behind China’s lunar ambitions. In an interview this week with Yahoo Finance , Nelson outlined what’s at stake in the new space race.

“I think it’s not beyond the pale that China would suddenly say, ‘We are here. You stay out,’” he said.

Asked Thursday about international competition in space, Ge said, “All countries in the world should explore, develop and use outer space peacefully.” 

“There is no need to worry too much,” he added. “Space programs are for all humans.”

As more countries around the world build up space capabilities, NASA has pushed for more global cooperation, establishing the Artemis Accords in 2020 to promote peaceful, responsible and sustainable practices. U.S. law prevents China from joining the 39 other nations that have signed the accords, which both China and Russia have criticized as a tool to promote U.S. dominance in space.

Many Western space policy experts have in turn raised concerns about China’s and Russia’s intentions. The full scope of China’s ambitions in space is not known, for instance, because its space agency does not operate with the same level of transparency as NASA. The country’s space program is also more closely tied to the military than in the U.S.

“We cannot ever say that China’s investment in civilian space technologies are only civilian and not to be used for military purposes,” said Namrata Goswami, a professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University and co-author of the 2020 book “Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space.”

While it may feel as if China’s spaceflight objectives have accelerated in recent years, they are part of a decadeslong strategy, Goswami said.

“Many of the leaders of China’s space program announced these goals and timelines 20 years ago,” she said. “What is astounding to me is that they are achieving almost all their milestones on time, and for them, that has a strategic advantage in the global narrative of who’s doing it better.”

As much as the moon and its resources can provoke competition among nations, space exploration can also be unifying, Swope said.

“We are literally a speck in the universe, and when we go to the moon or explore space, we as humankind have that shared human trait where we want to understand the unknown and we want to discover,” he said. “That does transcend politics.”

Janis Mackey Frayer reported from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China, and Denise Chow reported from New York.

Janis Mackey Frayer is a Beijing-based correspondent for NBC News.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

China's missions to the moon - past, present and future

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Chang'e-2, chang'e-3, chang'e-4, chang'e-5, chang'e-6, chang'e-7, chang'e-8.

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Reporting by Albee Zhang and Ryan Woo. Editing by Gerry Doyle

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New Zealand said on Saturday that its Antarctic agency signed a memorandum of understanding with Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute to foster cooperation between the two polar science bodies, amid China's growing presence in Antarctica.

German company HyImpulse successfully launched on Friday a candle wax-powered rocket capable of carrying commercial satellites on a test suborbital flight into space for the first time.

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China launches historic mission to retrieve samples from far side of the moon.

China on Friday launched an uncrewed spacecraft on a nearly two-month mission to retrieve rocks and soil from the far side of the moon, the first country to make such an ambitious attempt.

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The Sky This Week from April 26 to May 3: The Moon reaches Last Quarter

Friday, April 26 The Moon passes 0.3° north of the red giant star Antares in Scorpius today at 5 P.M. EDT. The pair is not visible in the early evening, rising in the hour before local midnight.  You can catch them overnight tonight by looking southeast around 11:30 P.M. local daylight time — by that time, Antares is some 6° high and the bright gibbous Moon is nearly half that height.

The two will continue to rise into the early-morning hours of Saturday. They are now some 5° apart, with the Moon sitting to Antares’ southeast (lower left). The pair will sit due south around 3:30 A.M. local daylight time on Saturday morning.

While you’re waiting for them to rise, earlier on Friday evening you can enjoy the dark, Moonless window for observing fainter, deep-sky objects. Sitting above Leo the Lion in the south about two hours after sunset is the tiny constellation Leo Minor. Within this small star pattern lies NGC 3344, a beautiful face-on spiral galaxy that glows at magnitude 9.9.

You can find NGC 3344 about 6.3° east-northeast of 3rd-magnitude Zeta (ζ) Leonis in Leo. The galaxy also lies less than 2° due north of 5th magnitude 41 Leonis Minoris in southern Leo Minor. Through your scope, NGC 3344 will look like a soft, circular glow spanning about 7′. Larger scopes (8 inches or more) will show a brightening at its core. This galaxy is sometimes called the Sliced Onion Galaxy. Sunrise: 6:06 A.M. Sunset: 7:50 P.M. Moonrise: 11:08 P.M. Moonset: 7:18 A.M. Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (93%) *Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40° N 90° W. The Moon’s illumination is given at 12 P.M. local time from the same location.

Saturday, April 27 With the Moon rising just before midnight, there are again several hours of dark-sky viewing available after sunset. Let’s seek out the Ghost of Jupiter, often considered one of the springtime sky’s premier planetary nebulae. It’s also cataloged as NGC 3242.

Planetary nebulae consist of gas and dust blown off by aging red giant stars; as these stars evolve into white dwarfs, the debris remains, lit up by the white-hot remnant within for a short time. Planetary nebulae are fleeting, only lasting some 10,000 to 20,000 years before fading away.

The Ghost of Jupiter is so named because it spans roughly the same size as the gas giant planet in our sky: about 16″ in diameter. Its compact, spherical shape combined with its magnitude of 7.8 make it relatively bright and easy to observe. To most observers, and particularly in larger scopes, it looks distinctly blue-green.

The nebula is located in Hydra, which sits in the south an hour or two after sunset. You can find the Ghost of Jupiter by looking about 6.5° west-southwest of 3rd-magnitude 4 Crateris in nearby Crater the Cup. Sunrise: 6:04 A.M. Sunset: 7:52 P.M. Moonrise: 11:06 P.M. Moonset: 8:00 AM Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (86%)

Sunday, April 28 Mars passes 0.04° south of Neptune at midnight EDT. Neither is visible at that time, as they rise a short time before sunrise — so tune in tomorrow, when we’ll catch them in the early-morning sky on Monday.

Tonight, let’s instead focus on the northern constellation Camelopardalis, which lies to the left of the North Star this evening. (Camelopardalis is a circumpolar constellation, meaning it appears to rotate around the North Star from northern locations, rather than rising in the east and setting in the west.)

Let’s first look for NGC 1502, a 6th-magnitude open cluster about 9° south of magnitude 4.6 Gamma (γ) Camelopardalis. This beautiful ball-shaped grouping of young stars is readily visible in binoculars as a soft glow, while telescopes will begin to pull out individual members as points of light.

NGC 1502 forms the “base” of a famous asterism called Kemble’s Cascade, which resembles a flow of water cascading down into a pool. The star cluster is often envisioned as the spray at the end of the line. From NGC 1502, you can trace the rest of the Cascade “backwards” to the source along 14 or so 7th- to 9th-magnitude stars to the northwest. NGC 1502 sits at the southeast end of the Cascade, which stretches about 2.5° in total.

Sunrise: 6:03 A.M. Sunset: 7:53 P.M. Moonrise: 12:11 A.M. Moonset: 8:53 A.M. Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (79%)

Monday, April 29 Now let’s home in on Mars and Neptune, some 12′ apart in the pre-dawn sky. Mars is magnitude 1.1, visible to the naked eye in a dark sky, but Neptune is so faint — magnitude 7.8 — you’ll need at least binoculars or a small scope to view this pairing. You’ll absolutely be able to catch both planets in the same field of view, even using the higher magnification of a telescope. It’s a great opportunity to view planets near and far through the eyepiece at the same time — Mars is now 184 million miles (296 million kilometers) from Earth, while Neptune is a whopping 2.85 billion miles (4.59 billion km) away.

The pair of planets rises around 4:30 A.M. local daylight time and an hour before sunrise, they are nearly 6° high in the east, located to the lower left of Saturn, which glows at roughly the same magnitude as Mars but stands a bit higher in the sky about 10.5° high at this time.

Mars will be easy to locate, then simply look through your optics to search for tiny, faint Neptune now sitting to the Red Planet’s west. Mars spans 5″ and will look distinctly orange-red, while Neptune is just 2″ across and will look more like a faint, “flat” star compared to Mars. Can you tell, though, that Neptune is a round disk, rather than a pointlike star? Having Mars in the same field of view for comparison may help. Sunrise: 6:02 A.M. Sunset: 7:54 P.M. Moonrise: 1:08 A.M. Moonset: 9:56 A.M. Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (69%)

Tuesday, April 30 Tonight, let’s look for a famous variable star in Leo the Lion: R Leonis. Leo is still 70° high in the south an hour after sunset. Look for the Lion’s brightest star — this is magnitude 1.4 Regulus, which marks the big cat’s heart. R Leonis is nearby, some 5° west of Regulus.

Because it is currently about magnitude 6.5, you’ll need binoculars or a small scope tonight to easily make out R Leo. It should look reddish to your eyes — it’s a cool, aging red giant star that is also classified as a long-period variable. Over the course of 312 days, R Leo transitions between magnitude 5 and 10.5 and back again. Its variability was first discovered in 1782, making it the fourth long-period variable ever identified.

R Leo recently reached its maximum brightness late last month and is now starting to ever-so-slowly fade back toward its minimum. If you’re particularly interested in following the star’s progress, you can visit the American Association of Variable Star Observers’ website and download an observing chart for R Leo here . Sunrise: 6:01 A.M. Sunset: 7:55 P.M. Moonrise: 1:56 A.M. Moonset: 11:06 A.M. Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (59%)

Wednesday, May 1 The Moon reaches Last Quarter at 7:27 A.M. EDT this morning. This lunar phase occurs when the Moon rises after midnight and lingers in the early-morning sky, offering early risers a chance to view our satellite before and after sunrise (though take extreme care when observing through optics after the Sun clears the horizon). Clearly visible now is the western portion of the nearside, dominated by Mare Imbrium and Oceanus Procellarum.

For those who prefer to observe in the evening, now is the time to catch your last glimpses of Jupiter, as the mighty planet is setting earlier and earlier each day. Tonight, the gas giant sets in the west within about an hour of the Sun, so you’ll want to start observing as soon as possible after sunset. Fortunately, the planet is bright at magnitude –2, allowing observers to easily pick it out of the twilight sky. Some 20 minutes after sunset, Jupiter is about 6° high, with Uranus (magnitude 5.9) to its lower right. Unfortunately, the distant ice giant is likely too faint to see in the glare of the fading light, even with binoculars or a telescope.

Nonetheless, your optics should show some detail on Jupiter’s large disk, particularly the colorful cloud bands straddling the equator. Depending on your observing location (and time zone), the Great Red Spot may be rotating onto the disk as well. Those on the East Coast may also catch the tail end of a transit of Io and its shadow — the moon moves off the disk around 8:30 P.M. EDT, while the shadow follows some 20 minutes later. After that, Io sits west of the planet near the limb, while Ganymede and Callisto (farthest out) sit farther west. Europa sits alone to the gas giant’s east. Sunrise: 5:59 A.M. Sunset: 7:56 P.M. Moonrise: 2:36 A.M. Moonset: 12:20 P.M. Moon Phase: Waning crescent (48%)

Thursday, May 2 Asteroid 4 Vesta is passing close to magnitude 3.1 Epsilon (ϵ) Geminorum tonight. You’ll find the magnitude 8.3 minor planet about ½° southeast of this star — an easy signpost to spot one of the main belt’s largest and most massive members. In fact, according to NASA, Vesta comprises some 9 percent of the total mass of the asteroid belt!

You’ll find Gemini in the west, about 40° high an hour after sunset. The constellation will slowly set as time goes by, so opt to view it earlier in the evening. The mighty hunter Orion is already nearing the horizon at that time, as the wintertime constellations begin to disappear from the sky while the spring and summer constellations are rising in the east.

Vesta will continue east through Gemini throughout the month of May, only dimming by 0.1 magnitude and making an excellent post-sunset target. For the most part, it will be one of the brightest points of light in any given field of view, and tonight you can even see it move slightly against the stationary backdrop of faraway stars if you’re able to observe for two or three hours. Note that the motion will be subtle, so take images or make sketches periodically to best note the change.

Vesta sits directly below Gemini’s two brightest stars as the Twins set: Castor (on the right/west) and Pollux (on the left/east) mark the brothers’ heads. Castor is slightly fainter (magnitude 1.6, compared with Pollux’s magnitude 1.2), but is a stunning double star that can be readily split with most scopes. Sunrise: 5:58 A.M. Sunset: 7:56 P.M. Moonrise: 3:09 A.M. Moonset: 1:36 P.M.    Moon Phase: Waning crescent (36%)

Friday, May 3 The Eta Aquariid meteor shower peaks in just two days, but early this morning there could be a brief increase in the number of meteors visible in the pre-dawn sky. That’s because early today, our planet is projected to move through the trail of debris left by Halley’s Comet when it passed through the inner solar system in 985 B.C.E. This famous comet is the parent of the Eta Aquariids, meaning its old debris trails are the source for these meteors. Because those trails drift with time in the solar wind, they can become slightly offset from each other, causing increases in the number of meteors on days other than the predicted peak. So, if you’re up early this morning, look east an hour or two before sunrise, when the radiant in Aquarius is well above the horizon. You can use the chart above to aid in finding it to the upper right of Saturn, which shines at magnitude 1 and is one of the brightest objects in this part of the sky. (Note that the chart above is for May 5, so the position of the Moon will be different — keep reading for more.)

Speaking of Saturn, the Moon passes 0.8° south of Saturn at 7 P.M. EDT. Early this morning when the two are visible well above the horizon an hour or so before sunrise, the waning Moon stands just under 8° to the right of Saturn, closing in. Again, as you can see from the chart above, which depicts the sky in two days’ time, the Moon will continue moving quickly across the sky and stand to Saturn’s left after it passes the planet.

Also at 1st magnitude, Mars lies farther east along the ecliptic in Pisces, lower to the horizon. The Red Planet has now left Neptune behind and is 3° to the distant ice giant’s east. (You can still spot Neptune, but remember you’ll need binoculars or a telescope and will need to do so before the sky starts to brighten.)

Late tonight, the tiny dwarf planet Pluto stands stationary against the background stars of Capricornus at 11 P.M. EDT. Sunrise: 5:57 A.M. Sunset: 7:57 P.M. Moonrise: 3:37 A.M. Moonset: 2:50 P.M. Moon Phase: Waning crescent (26%)

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