When will we land on the moon?

If you’ve been watching all this recent NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing activity lately and you’ve been wondering “when are we actually going back to the moon, and why haven’t we been there in over 50 years?” well, this newsletter is for you. Here’s a look at what’s going on in the U.S. space program right now, where we’re going from here, and how we got to this point.

The next missions: Artemis II and III

We’re currently basically in an in between phase when it comes to the space program: NASA has fostered and developed commercial spaceflight in low Earth orbit, but we haven’t yet gone back to the moon — which is where NASA has set its eyes next. This is the Artemis program, which will return humans to the lunar surface and establish a sustainable and long-term presence on and around the Moon.

Artemis I launched in late 2022, and this was an uncrewed mission to test the hardware, which consists of the SLS rocket and Orion capsule. This mission went very smoothly, even better than expected, though there were some issues with the Orion capsule’s heat shield that NASA needs to figure out before the next mission.

That next mission, Artemis II, is currently scheduled for September 2025, and it will be the first crewed mission of the program. This will consist of Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. (Jeremy Hansen is also a Canadian astronaut from the CSA). This mission will NOT land on the moon, though — it will travel 4,600 miles or 7,400 km beyond the moon and then come back to Earth on a free-return trajectory (basically a slingshot around the moon), a total of about 10 days.

It is Artemis III that will take humans back to the surface of the moon. That first moon landing mission is currently scheduled for September 2026, though it’s important to note that these dates are very subject to change. In fact, I’d say it’s likely these two missions will not happen when they’re scheduled. I am comfortable saying I think the moon landing will happen before the end of the decade.

On Artemis III, astronauts will launch to the moon and insert themselves into what’s called a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, or a propellant-efficient orbit around the South Pole. To astronauts will enter the HLS, which is under contract with SpaceX and will be a modified version of their Starship vehicle, and descend to the moon’s surface.

HLS will travel to lunar orbit separately from Artemis III, which is a change from the Apollo missions (the lunar module would launch separately, and then Apollo astronauts would dock with it in Earth orbit and take it with them to the moon). HLS will refuel in Earth orbit (this is one of the reasons that SpaceX has been working so hard on that propellant transfer capability during Starship test launches) and then head to the moon. Once there, it will dock with Artemis III.

Two astronauts will transfer to HLS and head down to the lunar surface for approximately six days — it is supposed to be the first humans on the moon since the Apollo program, assuming NASA is able to make its schedule and Chinese taikonauts don’t get there first. While we don’t currently know the crew of Artemis III, we do know that it will be one man and one woman.

(An important note: The Artemis III crewed landing is dependent on SpaceX’s HLS being ready—which is why so many of us are so closely following Starship’s development. But it seems like NASA is starting to plan for this vehicle possibly not being delivered on schedule. On Friday at a Congressional budget hearing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said of Artemis III, “if we land, it is dependent on SpaceX having their lander ready.” (emphasis mine)

Gateway Space Station will launch at some point

Okay, so now let’s talk about the space station in lunar orbit.

At some point in here, NASA will launch the first Gateway mission. Gateway is the space station we’re building in lunar orbit. This is an international collaboration, with the Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency, JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency), and the UAE’s space agency.

The idea is that Gateway will serve for lunar orbit as the ISS has served low Earth orbit. Thanks to the International Space Station, NASA has over 20 years of experience with what it means to live and work in space day to day. But the ISS is very close to Earth, just about 250 miles or 400 km above us. Gateway is the next step, teaching us to live a little further from Earth and figuring out what that might mean. This is all a testbed for an eventual Mars mission.

Gateway will be assembled in space across multiple uncrewed launches and crewed Artemis missions. The first is scheduled for no earlier than 2025, on an uncrewed SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Two modules will launch: the PPE, or power and propulsion element, which will provide power and high-speed communication with Earth, among other things. HALO will also be on that flight, and this is the Habitation and Logistics Outpost — which is basically where the astronauts will sleep, eat, exercise, and conduct research. These two modules will take about a year to reach a near-rectilinear halo orbit (a polar orbit) of the moon.

The timeline of this will all happen before Artemis IV, which is currently scheduled for 2028, but it will really depend on when the hardware is finished being built and tested.

Artemis IV, V, and VI are construction missions

Ok, so we’ve got two modules in orbit of the moon. Now comes Lunar Gateway assembly on Artemis IV, V, and VI. Artemis IV will bring the I-Hab, or International Habitation, module built by the ESA. This will provide living quarters for visiting astronauts, as well as multiple docking ports to accommodate all kinds of spacecraft. i-Hab will dock with HALO, and that will provide space for up to four astronauts to live on Gateway for up to 90 days.

(Gateway isn’t currently designed to be continuously inhabited like the ISS is, instead crews will come and go at least once a year.)

Artemis IV will be the first crew to enter Gateway, and two astronauts will stay on board while two more descend to the lunar surface on HLS. This mission will have an ESA astronaut on board, as will Artemis V.

Then comes Artemis V, which will focus on Lunar View, also built by the ESA, which will provide storage space and fuel, while Artemis VI will install the Crew and Science Airlock, built by the UAE, with Gateway. This will dock to i-Hab and will basically enable EVAs or spacewalks. It’s also important to note that while Artemis III and IV will use the HLS designed by SpaceX, Artemis V will use the Blue Moon Crew Lander, designed by Blue Origin. The target Artemis V date is currently 2030.

The reason for selecting a second provider to build a lunar landing vehicle and transportation system is the same reason NASA selected two providers for commercial crew, taking astronauts to and from the ISS: redundancy, so that if something happens to one vehicle they can use the other design, plus it’s easier to stick to a vehicle delivery schedule.

Artemis V will also have the first unpressurized lunar rover to go back to the moon since Apollo, called the LTV or lunar terrain vehicle. This vehicle will be operated by astronauts, but also it will have remote capabilities so it can complete objectives even when there are no astronauts on the lunar surface. NASA just awarded three different companies to explore development of the LTV, one of which is Intuitive Machines which performed the first uncrewed moon landing of the Artemis program.

SpaceX will provide cargo transfers to Gateway, much like they do to the ISS now, and Gateway has a planned lifespan of at least 15 years. Keep in mind that this was the original lifespan of the ISS as well, and it’s been continuously inhabited since 2000, so it’s very possible Gateway could last much longer than that. But also, part of this entire thing is figuring out how this large structure in lunar orbit will weather radiation and other issues outside of the protection of Earth’s magnetic field because the moon’s magnetic field is very weak.

This takes us through Artemis VI, which thanks to an agreement with JAXA earlier this year, will likely have two Japanese astronauts on board, along with a pressurized rover built by JAXA. NASA is currently estimating this mission for 2031.

We’re not done yet: Artemis Base Camp and what the future holds

After this, NASA will turn its focus to the lunar surface. The original proposal was to build a large Artemis Base Camp near the lunar south pole, which would house up to four astronauts for a week at a time. This base camp would have power, radiation shielding, a lunar rover for exploration, and even a mobility platform that would allow astronauts to basically camp on different areas of the moon. However, since then, NASA has talked about building smaller base camps in multiple locations instead of one single large camp, so we’ll just have to see what ends up happening.

This is pretty far in the future though, and there are no guarantees in terms of funding. Apollo was slated to go back to the moon again and again, but the program was cancelled because there just wasn’t a lot of interest in it after we landed on the moon with Apollo 11. But going to the moon in the 1960s was political. It wasn’t about space exploration or science, it was about beating the Russians to the moon. Once we did that, the political will to go back to the moon disappeared and NASA lost funding.

Everything after the Apollo program has basically been NASA figuring out how to achieve the lofty goals pressed upon it by the U.S. government and political figures without the funding to back it up. It’s basically been scrambling, and to be fair they’ve done well with the resources they’ve been given.

But anytime anyone comes at me with “why does NASA have such a huge budget when we could spend that money at home?” I am so confused by why people want to take away money from a space organization that gets approximately .3% of the U.S. budget, versus something like defense spending which is around 14 percent of the budget.

People also get irritated at me because I’m constantly talking about money and budget for NASA, versus lofty exploration goals, and that’s because money matters. NASA cannot do anything without proper funding, so what Congress will fund matters a lot for what the organization can do.

The relevant question here is whether Artemis funding will get cut off after a certain point — but also whether NASA will take other steps, for example exploring alternative launch vehicles like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy or Starship instead of the incredibly expensive SLS rocket, to cut costs. (It’s worth noting that even if NASA cancels SLS altogether, which is eye-wateringly expensive at over $4 billion per launch, they likely will just have that funding taken away instead of being able to apply it to other things).

But NASA was really smart about Artemis. Former NASA director Jim Bridenstine deserves a lot of credit for picking up the pieces of the Artemis program, bringing them together, and making this an international effort. Because Artemis involves so many countries and space programs, and is a multilateral effort to get back to the moon, it’s less likely to be cancelled.

So, this is where we are in terms of going back to the moon — the bottom line is that there will likely be boots on the ground by the end of the decade, very possibly earlier, though I think the September 2026 goal is still a stretch. What I do find exciting about the Artemis program, though, is its approach. This isn’t about just beating another country there, getting to the moon and not having a plan beyond that. This is about building a sustainable, long-term presence on the lunar surface, so we can use that as a test bed to explore our solar system.