NASA plans to launch four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the Moon with a splashdown off San Diego as early as February.
The space agency announced this week that the Artemis II mission could launch as early as Feb. 5, with the latest possible date April 26.
The 10-day mission will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, on a looping voyage around the Moon with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.
It would be the first crewed mission to travel to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The astronauts will blast off from Cape Canaveral inside an Orion capsule atop a giant Space Launch System rocket. At the end of the mission, when the capsule splashes down off San Diego, it and the crew will be recovered by a Navy amphibious warship.
The Navy recovered the uncrewed capsule from the Artemis I test mission in 2022, and has continued to practice recoveries off San Diego. SpaceX has also recently begun recovering its crewed space capsules in the Pacific, off Oceanside.
A successful mission in February will set the stage for Artemis 3 in 2027 — the first astronaut landing on the Moon in over 50 years.
