Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to launch the Artemis II mission on April 1, marking an important step in humanity’s return to the Moon, AzerNEWS reports.

This was announced by Lori Glaze, Acting Assistant Administrator for Exploration Systems Development at NASA.

“Although I and the agency as a whole feel confident in targeting April 1 as our first opportunity, we still have some work to do,” she said.

The crew of the 10-day mission will include NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.

The astronauts will fly aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, developed by Boeing, and travel inside the Orion spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin.

The launch was originally scheduled for February but had to be postponed due to issues with the rocket’s helium supply system. Engineers needed to return the rocket to the hangar for additional inspections and repairs.

If successful, Artemis II will become the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis Program and the first time astronauts travel around the Moon since the historic Apollo 17 mission in 1972. During the flight, the crew will perform a lunar flyby, testing the spacecraft’s systems and preparing the way for future missions that aim to land astronauts on the Moon later in the decade.