After multiple delays, the first crewed Artemis flight around the moon could be less than 20 weeks away, NASA officials said Tuesday, putting the space program one step closer to returning to the moon itself in its "second space race" with China.

The Artemis II mission, which would be the first crewed spaceflight to exit low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, had already been pushed back several times after its original launch target of 2024, with the most recent delay aiming for "no later than" April 2026. But with pieces falling into place, it could launch as early as Feb. 5, NASA officials said during a mission update from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We want to emphasize that safety is our top priority, and so as we work through these operational preparations, as we finish stacking the rocket, we're continuing to assess to make sure that we do things in a safe way," said Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

Monthly launch windows, which take into account the required proximity of the Earth and moon, would last four to eight days. Most of the February launch window attempts would be in the evening.

"As we get closer, we'll be able to more clearly communicate what those periods could be," Hawkins said.
Artemis II is planned to be a 10-day flight to take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a trip out past the moon, but without landing.

"Let me emphasize that this is a test flight, and so the activities that we do together, we are going to learn from them," Hawkins said. "While Artemis I was a great success, there are new systems and new capabilities that we will be demonstrating on Artemis II, including the life support systems, the display capabilities, software, etc."

It's a test mission that would set up Artemis III, currently on NASA's schedule for summer 2027, to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program.

Artemis I flew in late 2022, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft launching atop the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center.
But damage to Orion's heat shield was among the reasons mission managers pushed back the follow-up flight, resulting in no Artemis flights going on during the three years since the first launch.
NASA and Lockheed Martin worked to understand the damage, but decided to stick with the existing heat shield for Artemis II. They instead adjusted the planned reentry path to avoid what teams determined was the cause of the damage.

"I have the utmost in confidence in the engineering expertise that went into the testing and the flight rationale that we are going to be able to bring the Artemis II flight crew home safely at the end of the mission," said NASA's Rick Henfling, the lead Artemis II entry flight director.