Artemis program is a U.S. government-funded international human spaceflight program that has the goal of landing “the first woman and the next man” on the Moon, specifically at the lunar south pole region by 2024.
NASA is leading the program, but expects international partnerships to play a key role in advancing Artemis as the next step towards the long-term goal of establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon, laying the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy, and eventually sending humans to Mars
NASA will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish sustainable exploration by the end of the decade. Then, it will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars.
Artemis I will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond. During this flight, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and travel thousands of miles beyond the Moon, farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown, over the course of about a three-week mission.
Artemis program will begin with the crewed flight test of SLS and Orion on Artemis II in 2023. In this same time frame, NASA and its commercial HLS partners also plan to conduct in-space flight testing of the lander system, including potential tests to the lunar surface.
Nasa.gov