NASA officials on Tuesday said the agency's first crewed flight in its Artemis programme - a trip around the moon and back - is on track for launch in April and could potentially be moved up to February 2026.
The space agency's Artemis programme is the flagship U.S. effort to return humans to the moon, a multibillion dollar series of missions that rivals a similar effort by China, which is aiming for a 2030 astronaut moon landing.
Artemis 2, a 10-day flight in which a crew of four astronauts will fly around the moon and back, is a precursor test to the agency's first astronaut moon landing since 1972.
That mission, Artemis 3, is a far more ambitious and complex endeavor currently planned for 2027 and involving a moon lander variant of SpaceX's Starship rocket.
Artemis 2 involves NASA's Space Launch System rocket, built by Boeing and Northrop Grumman, and its Orion capsule, built by Lockheed Martin. Last year, NASA delayed the mission by several months to April 2026.
"We intend to keep that commitment," Lakiesha Hawkins, an acting senior official in NASA's exploration unit, said during a news conference on Tuesday of the 2026 date.
She added that the readiness of NASA's and Orion spacecraft could potentially warrant an earlier launch date, but that safety considerations will ultimately guide when the mission launches.
The Orion capsule will ride atop the giant, 98 metres (322-foot-tall) SLS rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first time the spacecraft duo will fly with humans.
Artemis 2 will fly astronauts Reid Wiseman, the mission's commander who last flew on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station in 2014; Victor Glover, the pilot who flew to space in 2020 on a SpaceX ISS mission; Christina Koch, a mission specialist who flew on a Soyuz ISS mission in 2019; and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, another mission specialist who will fly to space for the first time.
Hansen's inclusion will mark the first Canadian to fly in the vicinity of the moon.
Representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the United States are set to meet in Geneva for a third round of trilateral negotiations aimed at ending the ne...
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Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned on Monday that what he described as “illegal” Israeli measures in the occupied West Bank risk undermining de-es...
Representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the United States are set to meet in Geneva for a third round of trilateral negotiations aimed at ending the nearly four-year war, even as both sides intensify military pressure on the ground.
Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon killed two people in the past 12 hours, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
The Prime Minister, Mark Carney, announced on 16 February that the Honourable Janice Charette has been appointed as the next Chief Trade Negotiator to the United States.
Cuba’s fuel crisis has turned into a waste crisis, with garbage piling up on most street corners in Havana as many collection trucks lack enough petrol to operate.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said China has the power to bring an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, arguing that Beijing is enabling Moscow’s military campaign.
Austria’s Janine Flock won the gold medal in the women’s skeleton event at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Saturday.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani said the United States could evaluate its own interests separately from those of Israel in ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday (15 February) called it “troubling” a report by five European allies blaming Russia for killing late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny using a toxin from poison dart frogs.
Israel’s National Guard is preparing to deploy drones capable of firing tear gas at Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as part of security preparations ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli Channel 12 reported on Saturday.
ByteDance will take steps to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property on its artificial intelligence (AI) video generator Seedance 2.0, the Chinese technology firm said on Monday.
The formation of a black hole can be quite a violent event, with a massive dying star blowing up and some of its remnants collapsing to form an exceptionally dense object with gravity so strong not even light can escape.
BMW is recalling a mid six figure number of vehicles worldwide after identifying a potential fire risk linked to the starter motor.
British chipmaker Fractile will invest £100 million over the next three years to expand its artificial intelligence hardware operations in the UK, opening a new engineering facility in Bristol as it ramps up production of next-generation AI systems.
The European Union has launched its largest semiconductor pilot line under the European Chips Act, investing €700 million ($832 million) in the new NanoIC facility at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium, as part of efforts to strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty.
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