If Artemis II proves successful and a lunar lander is completed and cleared to fly, NASA aims to land a human crew on the moon as part of Artemis III.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—For the first time in 60 years, NASA has two crews in quarantine at the same time, awaiting the launch of their mission into space.
As the Artemis II crew gears up to fly around the moon, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 is getting set to fly to the International Space Station, and it appears their orbital mission will have a significant lunar focus.
NASA Astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency (ESA) Astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev could spend up to eight months aboard the floating laboratory as part of the remainder of Expedition 74 and the start of Expedition 75 liveaboard missions.
Their objectives include testing exercise equipment built by the ESA specifically for the Gateway, a space station NASA and its partners plan to put in lunar orbit as part of the Artemis program, and other future exploration missions. The crew will also be conducting lunar landing simulations.
Meir explained that she, Hathaway, and Adenot have already conducted some of those simulations on the ground, but microgravity simulations will help NASA better understand how the transition from Earth’s gravity to microgravity affects astronauts’ ability to land on the Moon safely.
They will conduct simulations at the beginning, middle, and end of their missions, testing their ability to land on the moon after various periods of microgravity.
For context, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin experienced roughly four days of microgravity before making their historic landing.
Crew-12 will also conduct post-mission simulations back on Earth.
If Artemis II proves successful and a lunar lander is completed and cleared to fly, NASA aims to land a human crew on the moon as part of Artemis III, which is slated to launch by 2028.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are the two commercial space companies expected to deliver that first crewed lunar lander to NASA, but the winner of that space race has yet to be determined.
By T.J. Muscaro
