As NASA prepares to put astronauts on the moon in the next few years, the agency is thinking about “how to live and operate away from the Earth, on other planets” — especially Mars.
Those comments were delivered during a virtual Artemis 4 landing site science workshop on Sept. 10 by Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist at NASA. Bleacher, a planetary geologist by training, has a mandate from NASA for “technology and architecture development to enable human exploration of the moon and Mars,” his agency biography states.
Bleacher said the greater Artemis program will eventually be aiming for far longer stays on the moon than the short two- or three-day Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s achieved. “We have learned from going to the moon in the past with Apollo, but we’re really on a different trajectory here,” he said. “We want to begin to learn how to live away from the Earth.”
The workshop was meant to ask scientists and other community participants for “science figures of merit” to help “evaluate and prioritize candidate landing sites with the highest science potential,” the agency added. Some of the factors being considered include learning about evolution of planets, the processes that influence lunar regolith or dust, as well as objectives in fields like sun science or physical sciences.
NASA didn’t conduct the workshop in isolation. Over the last decade, scientists have gained a better understanding of the South Pole-Aitken basin in which Artemis astronauts will land. That science was said to be one of the highest priorities of both the 2013 and 2023 planetary decadal surveys, which are essentially agreements by that community about which space missions to prioritize for science objectives, among other documents.
Artemis 4 is officially slated to launch no earlier than 2028, although that is pending progress of other missions of the Artemis program. (For perspective, NASA has not yet launched any astronauts on the program, although one crew — for the moon-circling Artemis 2 mission — is readying for a launch as soon as April 2026.)
Artemis 4 astronauts will spend six days on the moon’s surface, return lunar soil samples to Earth, collect data using astronaut observations and mission instruments, and execute up to four extravehicular activities (moonwalks) ranging as far as 1.2 miles (2 km) from the mission’s lander, NASA materials state.
Picking an exact landing site will take some time, although NASA will place the mission in the south pole region of the moon where ice and other critical minerals may be available for astronauts to use for future excursions.
And part of what Bleacher would like to see is not only infrastructure for longer lunar missions, but incentive for commercial industry to work alongside the agency for the long haul. He emphasized that the expense and complication of lunar missions means NASA will continue to seek partners, meaning both U.S. commercial partners and international agencies.
“What we’re trying to understand is, what do we — NASA, the United States government — need to put in place that welcomes and encourages that partnership so that we really can develop that longer term presence on the moon, maybe even permanent presence on the moon? And what really drives the development of that lunar economy? Who wants to be there, who wants to be working there, and what can we provide to get that foothold?”
As the name implies, Artemis 4 will be the fourth mission of the larger Artemis program, including dozens of other nations working together under the Artemis Accords, that seeks to put astronaut boots on the moon again while establishing an American-led framework for deep space exploration.
An uncrewed mission called Artemis 1 flew around the moon and back again in 2022. Four astronauts aim to do the same next year aboard Artemis 2: NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
The next mission would be Artemis 3, currently aiming for a moon landing. NASA’s official schedule has a target date of 2027, but that is pending readiness of SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to carry humans for a landing. Artemis 4 would be the next mission after that.
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