When do astronauts go to the Moon?

Twelve people have walked on the Moon, all between July 1969 and December 1972, all on Apollo missions. The last to leave the surface was Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, who landed with Harrison Schmitt in the Taurus-Littrow valley. Schmitt, a geologist by training, was the program's only professional scientist. Since then, the Moon has only received uncrewed automatic probes and landers from various agencies and companies.

NASA is building the return around the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Artemis I flew uncrewed in November 2022: Orion completed a trip around the Moon and returned, validating the heat shield at lunar reentry speeds. Artemis II essentially repeats that profile, but with four people on board — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen — on a flyby without landing. Artemis III is the mission meant to put human beings back on the surface, with a lunar lander derived from Starship and new-generation spacesuits.

The target is no longer the sunlit equator that Apollo chose, but the southern polar region. There, craters whose floors never receive sunlight act as cold traps: orbital data indicate the presence of water ice, a potential raw material for drinking water, oxygen and even propellant. Nearby ridges, by contrast, receive almost continuous sunlight, which makes power generation easier. That combination makes the south pole the most likely site for a sustained presence, which is the program's stated purpose and its essential difference from Apollo.