“Are you excited?” I asked Victor Glover in September 2024, when he was in the Netherlands for an astronaut conference. More than a year earlier, the American former fighter pilot had heard that he was one of four astronauts on Artemis II, the first manned moon mission since the Apollo era.
“I always find that question difficult,” he said firmly, “the honest answer is: no, I am a professional and the overriding feeling now is the focus that is needed for this. We still have a lot to do. A few weeks before the launch, then I am excited.”
That’s it now. The gigantic SLS moon rocket is already ready on launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 98-meter-high colossus will not be launched until February 6 at the earliest. In addition to pilot Glover, Commander Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen are also traveling. They will fly one lap around the moon in the Orion capsule and land in the Atlantic Ocean after a ten-day flight.
It is the first time in more than half a century that astronauts have visited the moon. In July 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the surface of our neighboring celestial body, and in December 1972 Gene Cernan was the twelfth and last moon walker.
“We are doing many things for the first time,” says Glover. “The Orion capsule has never flown manned, the spacesuits are new and we will extensively test the spaceship along the way. A lot still needs to be done.”
Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman (from left) speak to the press at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA
A wide bend around the moon
“I would have liked to come,” says André Kuipers half-jokingly, the Dutchman who flew to the International Space Station in 2004 and 2011. “I would have loved to see the entire Earth from space, like that iconic one earthrise photo of Apollo 8with the blue earth against the black of the universe.”
Indeed, the flight profile of the Artemis II moon mission is quite similar to that first manned lunar flight in 1968, when three NASA astronauts flew to the moon and circled it ten times at an altitude of 185 kilometers.
Only this time the Orion capsule will not enter orbit around the moon. The spaceship flies around it in one wide turn, about 6,500 kilometers away from the moon’s surface. So the four lunar travelers only circle the moon once, one flyby in space jargon. The sway that their spaceship receives from the moon’s gravitational field is just enough to send them back to Earth: a free return trajectory.
This way, the rocket motors only have to fire on the way out, Glover explains. “The first two minutes and 20 seconds push the first rocket stage and the boosters [de twee vastebrandstofraketten aan weerszijden van SLS] us up.” After the boosters are used up and disappear, the first stage remains on for another six minutes. “And then we are in orbit around the Earth.”
Then it is the turn of the second rocket stage, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), which takes the mission to a higher 24-hour orbit.
“There we disconnect from the ICPS stage, then we turn around and approach it a few times, to drift away again and perform a number of maneuvers,” says Glover, who as a pilot has primary responsibility for this. “These are exercises to find out exactly how Orion’s controls work, and so on rendezvous to master.” Rendezvous is the approach and docking of two spacecraft, which will become important on subsequent Artemis flights.
After those finger exercises the trans-lunar injectionsetting Artemis II on course for the moon. This is done by firing the rocket engine of the European Service Module (ESM), the support module under the Orion capsule that not only provides propulsion, but also steering, drinking and cooling water and electricity. The module was built by Airbus, on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA). The four seven-meter-long solar panels were made by the Oegstgeest branch.
When orbiting the moon, the astronauts can see the celestial body through four small windows in the Orion capsule. “What I’m especially looking forward to are the images,” says Kuipers, “also because the cameras are much better than in the 1960s.”
Only on the way back, near Earth, will the ESM module disconnect. Then the Orion capsule shoots into the atmosphere at a record speed of 40,000 kilometers per hour. The heat shield at the bottom becomes red hot to protect the rest of the capsule and the people in it.
It was this heat shield that caused problems during the first Artemis mission in 2022, without astronauts on board. The shield is made of centimeter-thick blocks of an epoxy resin in a silica matrix. During the descent the material reaches approximately 2,700 degrees Celsius. The heat shield must absorb that heat by burning and flaking off evenly, but after returning it turned out that large chunks had fallen out locally, probably because hot gases had formed within the heat shield and accumulated. In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia, with seven astronauts on board, crashed during return to Earth due to a damaged heat shield, which NASA management could have known about.
My life, the life of an astronaut, is a series of calms
“We are working on this issue,” Glover said in 2024, “and we will continue to work on it until we are actually ready to fly. The most important thing is that we have a team we can trust.” Initially, there was a lot of criticism of NASA because the problems with the heat shield only came to light a year and a half later. At the beginning of January, new NASA director Jared Isaacman, who took office in December, spoke after an extensive review expresses his confidence in the heat shield. In the flight plans, the angle at which the Orion capsule returns has been changed slightly to shorten the heat load.
And what comes after the flight? “Calm,” says Glover, “finally. My life, the life of an astronaut, is a series of calms and storms, and that makes it difficult to predict what you will do in a few months. But I also want to be a good husband and father, and that time will come.”
For all his spaceflight colleagues at NASA, the answer is more complicated. This mission is the second flight in the Artemis moon program, which is again American boots on the moon must bring, this time with the ultimate goal of a permanent manned presence in the form of a moon base.
According to NASA’s official plans, Artemis III, the first manned moon landing since 1972, should be launched in 2028. But few people believe that date is feasible.
That has everything to do with the complicated logistics. For the descent to the surface, near the moon’s south pole, NASA has ordered a version of Starship, the giant reusable rocket from Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX. Despite eleven test flights, five of which were successful, Starship is not yet operational. The 52-meter-high HLS version (which stands for Human Landing System), which must land independently and upright on the moon, is also still largely untested.
The plan is for Starship HLS to be launched and delivered into an extended lunar orbit before the crewed launch. Only then will the astronauts be launched with the Orion capsule, which has a rendezvous performed with HLS. Astronauts transfer and HLS descends to the moon and lands upright. Because the rocket is so high, the astronauts and their equipment have to descend to the moon’s surface in an elevator. “I think it’s a strange concept, a bit of a Tintin rocket,” says Kuipers. “How can such a long thing be guaranteed a stable landing on the moon? That elevator also seems rather impractical to me.”
In addition, after launch into orbit, HLS must be refueled with liquid oxygen and methane before it can continue. This refueling requires more than ten flights of a tanker variant of the Starship, which also needs to be developed. “Refueling with such cold liquids in space has never been seen before,” says Kuipers. “I think: that could be much simpler.”
China has a plan and is steadily working on it. I honestly don’t think NASA – and therefore we – will be ahead of them
Originally the plan was even more complicated. NASA, the European Space Agency ESA and Japan’s JAXA are working on Lunar Gateway, a small space station that will be placed in an elliptical orbit around the moon. Astronauts would dock with Orion and stay there for several weeks. To descend to the moon, HLS would also dock with the Gateway. Several modules for Gateway are still under development, including in Europe, but their use has been postponed to Artemis IV and later flights, in which Europeans would also fly.
But the planning of those flights is less clear. The focus is clearly on the moon landing, with which the US emphatically wants to get ahead of rival China. That country announced that it would deliver Chinese astronauts to the moon’s surface by 2030 at the latest. With a rapidly growing space sector and a long series of successful unmanned moon landings in the Chang’e program, China seems to have good credentials for this. China’s moon landing plan, which is more similar to NASA’s Apollo approach, is also simpler. “China has a plan and is working steadily on it. I honestly don’t think NASA – and therefore we – will get ahead of them,” says Kuipers.
That is not only a prestige issue, as in the 1960s, but also a strategic one. Kuipers: “We are going to the moon to do scientific research, but it is also a preparation for the manned journey to Mars. And who knows, we may one day extract minerals there.”
That does not seem very practical for the time being: the extraction of rare earth metals, for example, will be extremely more expensive than on Earth. Another candidate mineral is water, needed for manned bases and also useful as a raw material for rocket fuel. Kuipers: “You can now say: that is not possible or it is much too expensive, but we are talking about tens or perhaps a hundred years in the future. This is something for the long term.”
But before that happens, you have to establish and protect your presence, the reasoning goes, even though it has been explicitly agreed in space treaties that no one can own parts of celestial bodies. A space base is a first step, claiming the surrounding area is a second. Kuipers: “Imperialism is reigning supreme again, it would not surprise me if one day the US or China say: the moon is now ours.”
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