Category: Artemis

TENERIFE, Canary Islands — Imagine traveling over 250 million miles from home, watching Earth disappear behind the moon and losing contact with the billions of people who call it home. What would you miss most?

For Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover, the answer wasn't a particular place, a familiar view or even the comforts of home. It was something much more fundamental: human connection.

Speaking during a discussion with former astronaut Chris Hadfield at the Starmus VIII festival on Oct. 18 in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Glover reflected on the extraordinary experience of traveling around the moon and how being so far from Earth had given him a renewed appreciation for the people living on it.

"The greatest reason to go to space, it isn't to be a swashbuckler hero," Glover said. "It's to do something that only 651 people have been able to do: miss Earth and miss other Earthlings."

Glover was one of the four astronauts aboard NASA's Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1, 2026, marking humanity's first crewed journey to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the crew traveled farther from Earth than any humans before them.

As the Orion spacecraft traversed the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew watched Earth disappear below the lunar horizon before losing radio contact with our planet. Around 40 minutes later, Earth came back into view as the spacecraft emerged from behind the moon.

For Glover, however, the experience was about much more than the view. He believes that if everyone on Earth had the opportunity to make the same journey, they would come away with a similar appreciation for what they'd left behind.

"I think all of us would say something in our native language, in the most basic way we can communicate about love, joy, hope and inspiration," Glover said.

Although Glover shared the extraordinary journey with three fellow astronauts, the four of them were separated from the rest of humanity by hundreds of thousands of miles.

And for Glover, that distance brought with it a strange contradiction: the farther he traveled from humanity, the more he longed to connect with it.

"At the point of ultimate disconnection, [there is] this longing for connection," Glover said.

The experience gave him a perspective that he carried back into everyday life.

"There are moments where I am rushing through traffic and want to get where I'm going because I'm being selfish," Glover admitted. "But I don't have to stay there."

Instead, he remembers what it felt like to look back at a planet so distant that everyone who has ever lived could be covered by his hand.

"I wish you could all feel what it's like to come back home after that disconnection," he said.

The 'sea level effect'

Astronauts often describe experiencing the "overview effect", a profound shift in perspective that can come from seeing Earth from space. But Glover believes that there's something equally powerful waiting to be discovered much closer to home.

When asked by a Starmus VIII attendee whether people needed to undergo something extraordinary to develop a greater sense of kindness toward others, his answer was no.

Glover encouraged people to look more closely at the natural world around them, whether that meant walking along the beach, watching the ocean or simply examining a leaf held up to sunlight.

Even something as ordinary as a leaf, he explained, is capable of turning sunlight into food through photosynthesis. And although science can explain how that happens, understanding the process doesn't make it any less remarkable.

"We have to choose to be moved by these things," Glover said.

He worries that modern life, with its endless technological distractions, has made it all too easy to overlook the extraordinary things happening around us.

"Familiarity breeds contempt. Have you heard this? I think it's worse than that. Familiarity breeds indifference," he said.

Glover has a name for this perspective he hopes people can rediscover without traveling into space: The sea level effect.

It's about finding the same sense of wonder and connection that astronauts experience in orbit, but right here on Earth, where most of us spend our lives. And ultimately, Glover believes the greatest wonder isn't the moon, the stars, or even the incredible complexity of nature. It's the people we share our planet with.

"I think the hardest place to see this miracle is in the actual greatest miracle in the universe: other humans," he said.

"We all feel it with babies, but when we get old enough to have opinions, we start to want to argue with each other."

Glover hopes that by taking the time to appreciate the natural world, people might become a little more willing to appreciate one another too.

"That's the mission that I want to be part of for the rest of my life," Glover said.

NASA's Artemis IV moon mission will be a complicated affair — especially if SpaceX's Starship ends up being the lunar lander.

For all of the changing components of the Artemis program over the past several years, one of its most persistent may be the question of how many refueling flights Starship will need to land astronauts on the moon.

By summer 2021, it was common knowledge that Starship would require multiple launches to pull off an Artemis moon landing. A Government Accountability Office audit at the time, for example, estimated that it could take up to 16.

Earlier this month, a member of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said the refueling number could be as high as 22. But that estimate was quickly refuted by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who posted on his social media platform, X, that it would actually be closer to six or eight.

Perhaps an even bigger head scratcher, though, is how the refueling process will be carried out. Where (and when) will Starship's upper stage gas up when it's off planet? NASA released a graphic during a recent Artemis update that outlined an order of operations for the spacecraft on Artemis IV, which will be the program's first crewed lunar landing.

The mission will launch a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the four Artemis IV astronauts aboard NASA's Orion capsule to high Earth orbit, where they will rendezvous and dock with the Starship lunar lander.

Using Starship's engines, the two spacecraft will burn for the moon, and separate upon their arrival in low lunar orbit. Two astronauts will remain aboard Orion, while the other two will head down to the lunar surface in Starship.

After a little run through the regolith and a celebration of America's triumphant return to the moon, the duo will board Starship again to launch back to lunar orbit and dock with Orion before beginning the trip back to Earth.

All that seems well and good for a mission to the moon, and even has some resemblances with missions from NASA's Apollo days. What doesn't seem as immediately obvious when mapping out the Artemis IV mission outline, though, are the steps that Starship will be taking during its refueling process before the astronauts ever make it to space.

Orion will rendezvous with Starship in high Earth orbit — but that's not where the lander will launch initially. According to NASA's Artemis IV outline, SpaceX will first launch a depot ship to low Earth orbit (LEO), which will serve as the repository for all the fuel the Starship lander will eventually need.

The graphic shows a tanker Starship docked with the depot with "(multiple)" written next to it, so we don't know how many refueling flights will be needed for this initial depot fill. Once that's done, SpaceX will launch the Starship lunar lander to join the depot in LEO for its first pit stop.

Then, and this is where some of the head scratching begins, Starship will undock from the depot and raise its altitude to what NASA has labeled the "final tanking orbit," or FTO.

At some point after the Starship lander departs LEO, SpaceX will launch another round of "(multiple)" tanker ships to fill the depot with even more propellant. It will apparently then send the depot to meet the lander for another refill in FTO, where, as the name suggests, the two will dock for the pair's final fuel transfer.

After bidding the depot a second farewell, Starship will ascend to high Earth orbit to meet Orion.

NASA's graphic shows SLS launching Orion before Starship gets the last of its fuel, and the agency's website explainer for Artemis IV says the unusually choreographed order of operations for the mission does serve a purpose.

However many fuel boosts Starship ends up needing to get from LEO to the surface of the moon, its staggered orbital staging will apparently create some flexibility around when SLS can launch the Artemis IV astronauts to begin their mission.

And while Starship's orbital dance seems unnecessarily complicated, NASA says the new approach will actually reduce the amount of fuel SpaceX needs for the mission.

That's partly because Starship will take Orion directly to low lunar orbit, instead of the much higher orbit envisioned in previous mission plans.

But keep in mind: None of this is set in stone. If SpaceX can't demonstrate that its orbital refueling strategy works, or if it can't pull off an uncrewed lunar landing mission by the end of next year, NASA could still select Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander for Artemis IV — assuming Blue Moon is able to check its required boxes in time. Regardless of which company's lander delivers the first Artemis astronauts to the moon's surface, exactly how the pieces of those missions will come together should become clearer as the launch date gets closer. So, while SpaceX's refueling remains an open one for the time being, it's one of many for which we'll soon have an answer.

The leader of NASA's first mission around the moon in half a century is the last to announce what's next for him after retiring from active astronaut duty.

All four astronauts of the Artemis II mission, which flew around the moon in April, have hung up their spacesuits and moved on to greener pastures. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), managed by Caltech, announced yesterday that former NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman will step into the role of Caltech associate vice president and deputy director of JPL, beginning Nov. 30.

"Reid has spent his career at the edge of what is possible, and he has the technical judgment, operational experience, and leadership to help push that edge farther," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a JPL press release.

Wiseman announced his transition to "astronaut emeritus" alongside Artemis II pilot Victor Glover in September. Glover, subsequently, accepted a full-time role as executive advisor to the president of his alma mater, California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly).

Artemis II mission specialists, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen, also made the decision to step away from their spaceflight careers. Hansen announced his career change in July, and has since entered into reservist duty with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Koch, more recently, was appointed as NASA's acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

The quartet launched aboard NASA's Orion capsule on April 1, and completed a 10-day flight around the far side of the moon and back. Their mission took them further from Earth than any crewed spaceflight in history, and captured the attention of millions, who were captivated by the astronauts' incredible views and their ability to demonstrate the best traits of humanity, even while being the four people farthest from it.

The mission served as a stepping stone in NASA's Artemis program which aims to return astronauts to the surface of the moon and eventually establish a permanent base there. NASA is targeting mid-2027 for Artemis III as a flight test with Orion and the two Artemis lunar lander spacecraft (SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon). If everything goes according to plan, that mission will pave the way for Artemis IV, and the program's first crewed lunar landing in 2028.

A Baltimore native, Wiseman is a retired U.S. Navy captain who served as an aviator and test pilot before joining NASA's astronaut corps in 2009. He launched to space for the first time on the on the Soyuz TMA-13M mission to the International Space Station (ISS). He spent 165 days in orbit serving as part of ISS Expeditions 40 and 41, and completed two spacewalks totaling nearly 13 hours.

Before his selection for Artemis II, Wiseman worked as NASA's chief astronaut, overseeing crew readiness, astronaut assignments and flight safety from Dec. 2020 - Nov. 2022.

As JPL's new deputy director, Wiseman will serve under Director Dave Gallagher, helping oversee "strategic leadership, stewardship, and continuous improvement of laboratory operations," according to the JPL release.

JPL is a federally funded research and development center specializing in robotic space exploration. The lab is responsible for some of NASA's most recognizable planetary missions, including the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers, Europa Clipper and the Voyager probes. JPL also operates NASA's Deep Space Network, which provides continuous communications with spacecraft throughout the solar system.

"I've explored the furthest reaches of what a human can explore at NASA — and there were truly no words in the English vocabulary to describe seeing the sun disappear behind the moon from deep space," Wiseman said.

"But that experience was really the jumping off point to go do the impossible things that Caltech and JPL dream, dare together, and do for NASA and the nation.”

U.S. President Donald Trump just met another NASA Artemis crew.

The astronauts of NASA's Artemis III mission visited the Oval Office on Thursday (Oct. 28) and posed for a few photos with the president.

Their visit came nearly six months to the day after that of the Artemis II crew, who stopped by the White House on April 29, 19 days after the end of their historic flight around the moon.

The Artemis III astronauts are NASA's Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano (pilot). All four — plus backup crewmate Bob Hines of NASA, and agency chief Jared Isaacman — made the White House trip.

"It was a great day at the White House with President Trump and the talented crew of Artemis III," Isaacman wrote via X on Thursday.

Artemis III will launch to low Earth orbit in the summer of 2027, if all goes according to plan. The roughly two-week-long mission will aim to dock NASA's Orion capsule with SpaceX's Starship vehicle and/or Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

NASA selected Starship and Blue Moon to be the crewed lunar landers for the Artemis program, so Artemis III will provide valuable practice: On moon-landing missions, astronauts will launch aboard Orion and then meet up with either Starship or Blue Moon, which will carry them to the lunar surface and back up again.

That's slated to happen for the first time on Artemis IV, which NASA plans to launch in 2028.

We don't yet know which private lander(s) will launch on Artemis III; NASA would like to fly both of them, but it's unclear if both will be ready when the time comes.

That uncertainty applies to Artemis IV as well. We'll have to wait a bit before we know which spacecraft will have the honor of putting astronauts down on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

NASA just gave us our best look yet at its Artemis III moon-lander test flight.

The agency laid out a detailed concept of operations for Artemis III today (Oct. 23) during a press conference at Kennedy Space Center, stressing how important the flight is to its moon plans and how challenging it will be to make everything go right.

"We're launching three of the most powerful rockets in the world, and undertaking what is likely the most complicated launch campaign ever undertaken," Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager, said during today's event, which lasted more than two hours.

Those three rockets are NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, all of which will fly from Florida's Space Coast.

If all goes according to plan, New Glenn will lift off first, carrying Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander to low Earth orbit (LEO). SLS will go next, launching the Artemis III astronauts — NASA's Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano — aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft.

SLS will deploy Orion into a highly elliptical orbit, one that gets as close to Earth as 18 miles (29 kilometers) and as far away as 1,122 miles (1,806 km), according to Parsons. The capsule will then maneuver itself into an orbit with an altitude of about 345 miles (555 km).

"That's really about getting thermal stability," Parsons said. "Orion was built as a deep-space vehicle, and so we're going to have to really manage the thermal environments, which are higher in a low Earth orbit."

The Artemis III crew will spend two days checking out Orion and its systems in LEO before meeting up with Blue Moon, which will take place on Flight Day 3 at an altitude of 273 miles (439 km).

"Over the next two days, the crew will conduct operations docked with Blue Moon," Parsons said. "They're going to open up the hatch. They're going to enter the lander. They're going to evaluate the environmental controls, the life support systems. We'll confirm that the spacecraft can maintain the right atmospheric pressure, and we're also going to test emergency scenarios, dual vehicle control, and we're going to put our Mission Control teams through their paces."

After those operations are complete — likely on Flight Day 6 or thereabouts — Starship will launch, with a specially built docking adapter on its nose.

The SpaceX vehicle — the 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage of its fully reusable Starship megarocket — will meet up with Orion in LEO on Flight Day 8, at an altitude of about 237 miles (381 km). But this will be a very different encounter than the rendezvous with Blue Moon.

"The demonstration with Starship is shorter, about two hours," Parsons said. "The crew will not enter the Starship during the mission, but it gives us critical data and allows us to really understand the forces of docking, how we're going to push, how we're going to work together."

Artemis III will continue for another six to nine days after Orion undocks from Starship before finally heading back down to Earth for a parachute-aided ocean splashdown. (The nominal mission length is 14 days, Parsons said, but it could last as long as 17 days.)

During that time, the crew will evaluate their survival suits — something that didn't get done during the 10-day Artemis II flight around the moon this past April — and do a variety of other work as well, from detailed health assessments to scientific experiments and technology demonstrations. The main goal is to keep everything on track for Artemis IV, which will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028, if all goes to plan.

"Everything we do on Artemis III is designed to reduce risk for our future lunar landing missions," Parsons said. "We're teaching these teams how to work together, how to make critical real-time mission decisions, all in an environment that is low Earth orbit, where if something goes wrong, we can come home much more quickly."

It's unclear at the moment which of these two privately developed landers — Blue Moon or Starship — will fly on Artemis IV, pulling off the first crewed lunar touchdown since Apollo 17 in 1972.

NASA is still preserving optionality, "to give both of our lunar landing partners the greatest opportunity for readiness in advance of astronauts landing on the moon in 2028," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during today's event.

"We have no intention of surrendering a viable path to the surface before the data and schedule compels us to do so," he added.

No matter what decision NASA makes for Artemis IV, both Blue Moon and Starship should hit the gray dirt relatively soon, according to Parsons. "Regardless of who goes first, both providers are planning for lunar landing missions in 2028," he said.

And those missions will be quite different from each other. For example, on Blue Origin touchdowns, Orion will meet up with Blue Moon in lunar orbit. On SpaceX landings, however, Starship will likely dock with the NASA capsule in Earth orbit and propel it to the moon, Parsons said — the "push" he referred to above.

It remains unclear when exactly Artemis III will launch. NASA is targeting the summer of next year but may find it tough to meet that timeline: Last month, in an internal memo, Isaacman told agency employees that Artemis III was about 90 days behind schedule.

Some of the biggest challenges have involved the supply chain for the mission's lunar landers, Parsons said during today's event. But he and Isaacman both stressed that NASA is confident in its ability to work through such issues.

"We're moving with real speed and purpose right now," Isaacman said.

TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS — NASA's Artemis II astronauts were just minutes away from a critical engine burn that would send them toward the moon when an unexpected cabin leak warning threatened to change the course of their historic mission.

"If it had happened five minutes later, we may not have been able to have that burn," Artemis II pilot Victor Glover revealed during an Oct. 18 discussion with Canadian former astronaut Chris Hadfield at the Starmus VIII festival here in Tenerife.

The incident unfolded on April 2, the second day of the Artemis II mission, as the astronauts' Orion spacecraft swooped back toward Earth after traveling some 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) away. Orion had been completing a highly elliptical orbit around Earth, giving the crew and mission control an opportunity to test the capsule's systems before committing to the journey to the moon. Orion was now approaching its closest point to our planet, roughly 100 miles (160 km) above the surface, ahead of the crucial translunar injection (TLI) burn that would send the astronauts moonward.

"Jeremy looks out the window and says, 'I think we're going to run smack dab into the middle of Earth,'" Glover recalled, referring to Artemis II mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. "Because we were getting so low."

The close approach brought additional challenges, as Orion passed through a region populated by orbital debris and satellites.

"The density of things is going up from where we are, and also an increase in radiation," Glover explained.

It was at this particularly demanding point in the mission that Orion issued a warning that indicated a possible cabin leak, around 15 minutes before the critical TLI burn.

"So, determining whether it was real or not was a big deal," Glover said.

The crew and mission control faced a crucial question: Was it safe to continue heading to the moon, or would they have to abandon the planned maneuver and cut the mission very short? "Are we going to do a TLI and burn to go to the moon, or are we putting on our spacesuits to prepare to come back to Earth right now?" Glover recalled.

The timing was particularly critical. The TLI burn was designed to propel Orion out of Earth orbit and onto its trajectory around the moon, marking the first time astronauts had headed toward Earth's nearest neighbor since the Apollo era.

Luckily, as NASA flight director Judd Frieling told us during an April 2 media briefing, the warning turned out to be a false alarm.

So Artemis II received the go-ahead. Orion fired its main engine for approximately five minutes and 50 seconds, successfully setting the four astronauts on their journey around the moon.

"We're watching the timer count down, velocities go up, and the magenta and green numbers coming together," Glover recalled.

"Everything is tracking. It's looking good."

Before long, the crew had broken free of Earth's gravitational hold and were hurtling toward the moon at around 24,500 mph (39,430 kph).

Despite the tense moments before the burn, Artemis II went on to make history. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (the mission's commander), Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), along with Hansen, traveled farther from Earth than any humans before them, reaching a maximum distance of 252,756 miles (406,771 km) during their journey around the moon.

The four astronauts returned safely to Earth on April 10, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego after nearly 10 days in space.

NASA will provide an update about its Artemis moon plans today (Oct. 23), and you can watch it live.

The news will come during a press conference at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which starts today at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

"The update will include details about NASA’s Artemis III mission that will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit next year to test critical systems needed for future lunar landings, and how plans to return American astronauts to the moon by 2028 are progressing," NASA officials said in an Oct. 14 media advisory.

Three agency officials will participate in Friday's "Artemis Acceleration" event. They are:

• NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
• NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
• Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager

NASA is currently gearing up for Artemis III, which is targeted for mid-2027. The mission will test rendezvous and docking technologies between NASA's Orion capsule and one or both of the private spacecraft that NASA picked to be the Artemis program's crewed lunar landers: SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

After that will come Artemis IV, which will land astronauts near the lunar south pole in early 2028, if all goes to plan. That will be the first crewed moon touchdown since Apollo 17 way back in 1972.

It's unclear which lunar lander will fly on Artemis IV; that depends on how the development of each one progresses and what happens on Artemis III.

And there will be other landings after Artemis IV. NASA plans to establish a moon base via Artemis, and doing so will require a variety of missions, both robotic and crewed.

The agency feels some urgency in this quest, for China has similar goals. It's important that the U.S. wins this new space race, military and political officials have said, so that the nation can establish the norms of responsible behavior on Earth's nearest neighbor.

NASA has revealed new details about its plans to return astronauts to the surface of the moon, outlining a series of upcoming milestones for SpaceX and Blue Origin as both companies race to ready their lunar landers for the agency's Artemis program.

During an Oct. 5 presentation at the Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Antalya, Türkiye, Steve Creech, acting manager of NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) Program, laid out development timelines for both spacecraft, with key demonstrations planned through early 2028 that include orbital refueling and uncrewed lunar landing tests to qualify the vehicles to fly astronauts to the surface of the moon.

A more pressing deadline, however, is NASA's Artemis III mission, which is targeted for the third quarter (Q3) of 2027. Artemis III will launch four astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO), where they will rendezvous and dock with test versions of both companies' landers for interoperability checkouts. Those demonstrations will help inform NASA's determination about which lander the agency will choose to carry astronauts to the moon's surface on Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028.

SpaceX and Blue Origin were both awarded NASA contracts to develop HLS vehicles — Starship and Blue Moon, respectively — and have spent the past several years refining their respective lunar lander designs and dealing with various delays along the way. In the face of those delays, and in an effort to better structure its mission progression for success, NASA overhauled its Artemis program architecture in February to maintain its goal of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of 2028 and establish a more regular cadence of uncrewed landings in the meantime.

As part of that shakeup, Artemis III, previously the program's first crewed lunar landing mission, was moved up a year and repurposed for the lunar lander vehicle tests the agency is preparing to fly to LEO next year. The program's first moon landing remains scheduled for 2028, but was shifted to the manifest for Artemis IV.

Between now and then, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have more than a dozen test demonstrations and vehicle milestones to achieve, including success during Artemis III and flights afterward. This will all lead up to a key decision NASA must make: Which vehicle will carry out the first crewed landing on the surface of the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972?

Starship reached for the first time on its most recent test flight, which occurred on Sept. 28 from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. NASA lists several other important goals for the vehicle to achieve in 2026, including (in the order listed during the IAC presentation) the first return and catch of the rocket's upgraded Version 3 (V3) booster at its launch pad; the first-ever return and catch of a Ship upper stage; the first Starship launch from one of SpaceX's launch pads still under construction on Florida's Space Coast; and, possibly, the first V3 booster reflight.

NASA also expects SpaceX to complete the initial build of the crew cabin for its lunar lander Starship variant. SpaceX released renders of Starship's interior last year, as well as images of the test elevator astronauts are using to train for Starship egress on the lunar surface, but little else has been made public about the progress the company has made on the cabin's design.

Should the cabin's initial build wrap up by the end of the year, as NASA's presentation suggested, SpaceX will use Q1 2027 to complete integration of the systems that Starship will need to communicate with Orion during Artemis III, and deliver a cabin simulator for astronauts to train on leading up to the mission. SpaceX plans to continue Starship test flights through Q2 of next year, complete a landing leg demonstration and begin crew cabin airlock tests.

Blue Origin's lunar lander mockup is ready for NASA Artemis astronaut training

For Artemis III, SpaceX plans to fly one of its existing V3 Starship upper stages, with some slight modifications. Starship and Orion will dock as part of Artemis III but the SpaceX vehicle won't be equipped with a crew cabin for the mission's astronauts to enter. Between the end of this year and the beginning of the next, SpaceX is expected to complete the addition of a docking system and nosecone cover to the Artemis III Starship vehicle, which, NASA documents suggest, has already completed its mechanical fit checks.

Other notches on SpaceX's checklist leading up to Artemis III include the first propellant transfer demonstration with Starship in orbit. As the first-ever launch vehicle and spacecraft designed for full reusability, Starship's fuel constraints require that its tanks be topped off in order to fly beyond LEO. For a moon landing mission, this could mean up to a dozen launches of SpaceX's Starship "tanker" spacecraft to an orbiting fuel depot, which the moon-bound Starship will visit. To pull that off, though, SpaceX has to show it can successfully transfer those cryogenic fuels on orbit, and also store them effectively enough to prevent too much boil-off.

Starship won't require any refueling flights to complete its objectives for Artemis III, but SpaceX is expected to launch its first Starship tanker vehicle within a few months of that mission as it gears up for the Artemis IV moon landing mission. To that end, a launch of an uncrewed Starship lunar lander variant is targeted sometime toward the end of Q3/beginning of Q4, with an uncrewed lunar landing mission carried out before the end of 2027.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, has its own set of milestones to meet as it develops its Blue Moon Mark 2 (MK2) lander — a 52-foot-tall (16 meters) spacecraft powered by three BE-7 engines. Unlike the bare-bones V3 Starship that SpaceX will launch on Artemis III, Blue Origin plans to fly a completed test vehicle, incorporating the crew cabin, partial life-support, flight software and other systems needed to allow astronauts to enter the lander from Orion during their time docked in LEO. Astronauts will be able to enter Blue Moon from Orion to get a feel for the lander in zero-g and test some of its systems.

NASA's timeline shows the company working to complete a series of manufacturing and testing milestones in the last few months of 2026, including continued BE-7 testing and qualification of Blue Moon's BT-7 maneuvering thrusters. The company also faces its Artemis III interim design review and a critical design review for an upcoming landing demonstration mission in 2028.

Blue Origin is also working to restore its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) to operation and return its New Glenn rocket to flight, following an explosion of the rocket in May that caused extensive damage to the facility. NASA's presentation places that milestone in Q4 2026, a timeline the company has also been very vocal about maintaining. A recent Reuters report, however, suggests that may not happen until early 2027.

By early 2027, the company expects to complete the spacecraft's communications systems and finalize its flight software, with assembly, integration and testing continuing into Q2. Q1 2027 is also when Blue Origin's Blue Moon MK1 lander (a smaller, uncrewed version of its MK2 successor) will launch to the lunar surface as a part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program of robotic moon missions.

During Q2 2027, as the Artemis III mission approaches, Blue Origin is expected to complete integration of its test lander with New Glenn and conclude qualification of its BE-7 engine. Throughout next year, the company plans to continue construction and refurbishments at its launch facilities and hopes to have a new launch pad ready to support the upgraded, more powerful New Glenn 9x4 rocket l by the end of Q3. The first flight of that rocket variant is scheduled for Q4 2027, alongside a second MK1 lunar mission and the launch of an uncrewed MK2 demonstration lander.

That spacecraft is expected to attempt its own uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2028, around the same time Blue Origin has scheduled a third MK1 flight. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin will need to demonstrate that its lander can safely reach the moon's surface,operate there and return to lunar orbit before NASA clears it to carry astronauts on a future Artemis mission.

NASA's overall timeline remains the same as it has been since the February revamp, with Artemis III expected to launch in mid-2027, followed by a crewed lunar landing on Artemis IV in 2028, and possibly another on Artemis V that same year. There may be changes on the horizon, though. NASA will host a press conference on Friday (Oct. 23) with Administrator Jared Isaacman and Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, as well as Artemis program director Jeremy Parsons. During the event, which you'll be able to watch here at Space.com, they will discuss the status of the upcoming moon missions and an "Artemis acceleration."

SpaceX and Blue Origin still face tight schedules to complete their respective uncrewed landing demonstrations before Artemis IV. With SpaceX targeting Q4 2027 and Blue Origin Q1 2028, both are pushing the margins against NASA's hopes to return astronauts to the lunar surface that same year. Which company ultimately gets the green light for that first landing mission will depend on the progress each makes between now and then, and whether their landers can demonstrate the readiness that NASA requires to safely carry astronauts to the surface of the moon and back again.

TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS — The Artemis II astronauts may have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth to the moon, but they made sure the rest of us didn't miss out on the adventure.

Now, their efforts to bring the wonders of space exploration back down to Earth have earned them one of science communication's most prestigious honors: the Stephen Hawking Medal.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, accepted the award on Saturday (Oct. 17), during the opening ceremony of the Starmus VIII festival. The honor recognizes all four crew members, including NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who wasn't in attendance.

For Wiseman, the experience of seeing our home planet from the vicinity of the moon carried a powerful message.

"If we could take each of you 250,000 miles away from this planet, 400,000 kilometers away from planet Earth, and you would see Earth the size of your thumb. It's tiny," Wiseman told the audience.

"When you're there looking through the moon, back at this tiny Earth, the only thing you feel is love, peace, hope, unity", he continued. "Those aren't the right words, but that is all you feel."

During their historic Artemis II mission, the astronauts did far more than put NASA's Orion spacecraft through its paces. Through live communications, interviews and glimpses into life aboard the spacecraft, not to mention the jaw-dropping photos that just keep on coming, they helped turn an extraordinarily complex mission into something people worldwide could experience and connect with.

And that's exactly what the Stephen Hawking Medal is designed to celebrate.

Established in 2016 by physicist Stephen Hawking and Starmus, the award honors those who have gone above and beyond to make science accessible, engaging and inspiring.

The Artemis II crew joins some pretty impressive company. Previous recipients include Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, naturalist David Attenborough, primatologist Jane Goodall and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

This year's ceremony marks the medal's 10th anniversary, with filmmaker Ridley Scott also among the 2026 honourees.

"It's a special thrill for us at Starmus to be able to honor the intrepid Artemis II crew members in the same way that we honored the Apollo astronauts who paved the way to the moon over 50 years ago," Starmus co-founder and Queen guitarist Brian May said in a statement ahead of the ceremony.

Wiseman left the audience with one final thought.

"When you come home to this beautiful planet, you realise that it's in every single one of us to choose to make tomorrow better," he said. "So let's all choose to make tomorrow better".

Starmus VIII runs from Oct. 17-22 across Tenerife and La Palma in the Canary Islands. This year's festival, themed "The Search for Truth", brings together leading scientists, astronauts, musicians and artists to celebrate scientific discovery and explore the importance of evidence and scientific thinking.

Don't expect any of the Artemis II moon astronauts to fly again soon.

On Tuesday (Oct. 13), NASA announced that Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch will become the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

"With this appointment, Koch will transition to management astronaut status and will no longer be eligible for future spaceflight assignments," NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

Her three Artemis II crewmates had already shared their next moves, none of which put another spaceflight in play in the near future.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both of NASA, became "emeritus" astronauts last month, a role that seems to include planning, advising and mentoring duties but no flights into the final frontier. Glover will also work full-time at his alma mater, the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.

"I'm grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said of Wiseman and Glover in a Sept. 9 statement.

The fourth Artemis II astronaut, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, announced a change of his own in July: He planned to become a reservist in the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he's also a colonel. That move became official last month as well.

Artemis II sent the four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972.

As Isaacman mentioned, the next mission in the program is Artemis III, a docking test in LEO scheduled to launch next year. The Artemis III crew, which was announced in June, consists of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (pilot).

If all goes according to plan, Artemis IV will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028. We don't yet know who will fly on that historic mission.

Koch will succeed current NASA Deputy Chief Engineer Katherine Van Hooser, who will retire on Oct. 21 after more than 35 years of work for the space agency.

"In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA's engineering community, supporting technical oversight, mission readiness, and engineering excellence across the agency's programs and projects," agency officials said in Tuesday's statement.

Koch is a natural choice for the job, given her education and experience. She holds bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master's in electrical engineering, and she began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

NASA selected Koch as an astronaut candidate in 2013. She has two spaceflights under her belt: Artemis II and a 328-day-flight to the International Space Station that launched in March 2019. That's the longest space mission ever conducted by a woman, and it featured the first three all-female spacewalks, which Koch conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.

"Christina has seen NASA engineering from both sides of the equation: developing complex systems on the ground and trusting them with her life in space," Isaacman said in the Tuesday statement.

"After spending nearly a year living and working aboard the International Space Station and helping lead America back around the moon on Artemis II this year, she brings an extraordinary combination of technical expertise, operational experience, and judgment to this role," he added. "I am excited to see the impact she will have across NASA as we return Americans to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power in space, and develop the capabilities that will ultimately take us on to Mars."