{"id":17195,"date":"2026-03-31T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T00:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/31\/artemis-ii-countdown-begins-to-nasas-trip-around-the-moon-the-first-manned-mission-there-in-more-than-50-years\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:00:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T00:00:38","slug":"artemis-ii-countdown-begins-to-nasas-trip-around-the-moon-the-first-manned-mission-there-in-more-than-50-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/31\/artemis-ii-countdown-begins-to-nasas-trip-around-the-moon-the-first-manned-mission-there-in-more-than-50-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Artemis II: Countdown begins to NASA\u2019s trip around the moon, the first manned mission there in more than 50 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The countdown has begun for the launch of NASA\u2019s Artemis II mission around the moon.<\/p>\n<p>The 32-storey Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is set to blast off from the Kennedy Space Centre in <strong>Florida<\/strong> on Wednesday, sending four astronauts on a 10-day flight ending with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sdc-site-outbrain sdc-site-outbrain--AR_6\">\n<div class=\"OUTBRAIN\">    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>At a briefing by <strong>NASA<\/strong> on Monday, Emily Nelson, chief flight director, said teams in mission control and crew members are \u201cready to go\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Artemis II: Everything you need to know<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Artemis I mission didn\u2019t have any astronauts on board but was successfully sent into orbit around the moon in November 2022.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad ad--teads\">\n<div class=\"ui-advert \">\n<div class=\"ui-advert-slot\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Artemis II takes it a step further with a crew on board, but it won\u2019t be until Artemis III that astronauts will actually land on the moon.<\/p>\n<p>The US space agency hopes to use Artemis to build a base camp on the surface and potentially use it to get a human to Mars.<\/p>\n<p>After a liquid hydrogen leak during a practice launch in February, NASA was <strong>forced to delay the operation<\/strong> until Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>At 98m tall, the SLS rocket is roughly the height of Parliament\u2019s Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben. Not since Apollo 17 in 1972 have humans touched down on \u200bthe moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sdc-site-layout-sticky-region\">\n<div class=\"sdc-site-layout-sticky-region__target\">\n<div class=\"sdc-site-layout-sticky-region__mask\">\n<div class=\"sdc-site-layout-sticky-region__content\">\n<div class=\"ui-advert \">\n<div class=\"ui-advert-slot\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The astronauts on board are NASA\u2019s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.<\/p>\n<p>British astronaut Major Tim Peake has said Europe, including the UK, is heavily involved in the Artemis programme.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were there on Artemis I\u2026 we built the European service module which powers the Orion spacecraft that provides all the electrical power, the life support systems, the propellant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>NASA has the first six days of April to launch Artemis II before standing down until the end of the month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The countdown has begun for the launch of NASA\u2019s Artemis II mission around the moon.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streetfingazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}