Artemis IV

So Starship's human landing system is one of the central vehicles, and Blue Origin also has their lunar lander that hopefully – Artemis III is going to test both of those.

Artemis IV is now targeted to conduct the program's first crewed lunar landing.

Before Starship can carry astronauts to the Moon, however, SpaceX must demonstrate orbital refueling, long-duration flight docking, and an uncrewed lunar landing.

So Flight 14 isn't going to accomplish all of that.

So why go to all this trouble? Because this is a rehearsal.

On Artemis IV, the plan is for Starship to literally push Orion to the moon, allowing it to stay in a much lower lunar orbit where astronauts ride home could pass overhead every couple of hours rather than once a week.

So yes, Artemis 3 might be the moon mission that doesn't actually go to the moon, but it could completely rewrite how we get there.

Okay, that's it from me this week.

Artemis III will be NASA's most complex crewed mission to date, involving three separate rocket launches and two privately built lunar landers that will carry out a series of demonstrations in low Earth orbit designed to validate critical systems for future Moon landings.

Artemis IV will push further still, with astronauts actually touching down on the lunar surface, staying approximately a week, more than twice the Apollo 17 record.

But these milestones are only steps towards a far more ambitious plan, transforming the Moon into a place where people actually live.

The problem is that when Artemis was announced, we didn't actually have a long-term plan for how to achieve it.

It will touch down on what's known as the Shackleton Connecting Ridge, a narrow strip of high ground that extends away from the rim of Shackleton Crater.

This is one of the most scientifically important permanently shadowed craters at the South Pole, because it provides the perfect mix of water ice at the crater floor and almost constant sunlight at the rim, as I mentioned earlier.

It also has a clear line of sight, making communication with Earth relatively easy, reducing the risk for the later crewed landing of Artemis IV in 2028.

Other phase one missions, originally targeted to launch in 2026, will deliver international science payloads, and Astrolab's FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform, a rover that will demonstrate important mobility technology and inform future lunar terrain vehicle, or LTV, use.

We will test interoperability and show what a future multi-launch campaign can actually look like.

What we learn will inform the uncrewed test landings that follow, and then Artemis IV in 2028 when American astronauts return to the lunar surface, and this time to stay.

In parallel, [laughs]

[applauding]

We're going to send up the crew, and we're going to send up landers to low Earth orbit with Artemis 3, and they're going to practice how that all works.

And then Artemis 4 will go to the moon, and that's just a couple years away.

Just incredible stuff.

Evan Brown, thanks for the insight this morning.

The crew will launch on SLS and Orion, remain in Earth orbit, and test rendezvous and docking operations with test versions of the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers.

The first planned crewed landing at the Lunar South Pole has been moved to Artemis IV, now targeted for 2028.

So to directly answer part of what the listener asked, the four astronauts who were just announced are training for Artemis III, but under the current plan, that mission stays in Earth orbit.

They're not the crew that will land on the Moon.

That would be Artemis IV with the crew that's yet to be finalized.

This change is both sensible, assuming that the test articles have sufficient fidelity to the real thing, and also revealing.

It is sensible because rendezvous and docking between Orion and commercial lunar landers is not trivial.

Using the crew exploration vehicle, we will undertake extended human missions to the moon as early as 2015 with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods of time.

Now, that last mark won't quite get hit, though Artemis IV is scheduled to land astronauts back on the moon sometime in 2028.

But in the immediate aftermath of George W. Bush's rousing speech, Congress approves the $16.2 billion he asked for to kickstart that vision.

Now that the school year is officially underway, families are getting a clearer picture of where students are thriving and where they might need a little extra support.

Artemis III launches in 2027.

Artemis IV is when American astronauts return to the lunar surface in 2028.

And in parallel, we are building the moon base.

We're even going to have a moon base website.