For the first time in more than 50 years, NASA is preparing to launch astronauts around the moon.On Wednesday, the agency will attempt to send four crew members — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day journey in which they’ll first orbit Earth then circle the moon. The mission, known as Artemis II, will be the first time NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule carry humans into space.If successful, the flight will be a major step toward NASA’s goal of establishing a long-term presence on the lunar surface.AdvertisementAdvertisementNASA’s efforts to return to the moon have been decades in the making — a process the agency has documented in images at every stage.NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft at Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 24. (Gregg Newton / AFP; Getty Images)(Gregg Newton)The Artemis program was born out of a directive that President Donald Trump signed in 2017, during his first term. It tasked NASA with focusing on “the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.”In a speech in 2019, Vice President Mike Pence directed NASA to put bootprints on the moon again by 2024.That landing, however, is now delayed until at least 2028.But NASA began development of the technology being used for the Artemis missions far earlier. Work on the Orion spacecraft that will carry the Artemis II astronauts, for instance, began in 2006. And Congress in 2010 authorized NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, designed to be more powerful than the Saturn V booster used in the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s.Left: The interior of a mock-up of the Orion capsule at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in 2016. Right: The interior of Orion in 2024. (NASA)(NASA)Reid Wiseman participates in water survival training in 2024. (Josh Valcarcel / NASA)(Josh Valcarcel)Members of the media set up remote cameras to photog …
