NASA will reveal potential future landing sites for a human return to the moon’s surface, and you can watch the briefing on Space.com today (Aug. 19) or directly on the space agency’s website.
NASA is serious about returning humans to Earth Moon this decade and has already worked out the most convenient landing sites that will be the target of the mugwort 3 mission in 2025.
The agency will reveal the candidate landing sites at a briefing today (Aug. 19) at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), NASA said in a statement. statement (opens in a new tab). NASA and its partners plan to land near the lunar south pole, where water ice is thought to exist in permanently shadowed craters. The region also presents exciting opportunities for scientific exploration, including astronomical observations from the surface of the moon.
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 Lunar Mission: Live Updates
“Each of the selected regions, from which specific landing sites can be selected, is of scientific interest and was evaluated based on terrain, communications and lighting conditions, as well as the ability to meet scientific objectives” NASA said in the statement. “NASA will be engaging with the broader scientific community in the coming months to discuss the merits of each region.”
If successful, the landing will mark the first time since apollo 17 mission in 1972 that humans will have set foot on Earth’s celestial companion. The ambitious Artemis program aims not only to put the first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the moon, but also to establish a permanent human presence on the moon and in its orbit.
The first step of the Artemis program will take place later this month with the uncrewed test flight of the NASA Space Launch System Rocketthat will raise a void Orion crew capsule for a trip to and from the moon and back to test a variety of critical technologies. If successful, the mission, called Artemis 1it will pave the way for the first round-trip human lunar journey in 2024 and subsequent landing in 2025.
NASA has already selected SpaceX to build the landing system to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon as part of the Artemis 3 mission.
Later in the decade, NASA and its partners (the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) plan to establish a permanent space station in orbit around the moon, called Gateand eventually a base on the surface of the moon.
In the future, missions to Mars it could be taking off from the Moon instead of Earth to reduce the cost and technical complexity of these launches.
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