As each of the astronauts on the Artemis II mission put it, their historic trip around the moon and back was a relay race. To symbolize the moment, each of the crew members bought a literal, physical baton that they kept on their desks.
Commander Reid Wiseman had a red baton; pilot Victor Glover had gold; and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen had blue and green, respectively.
"And when you're up there, you kind of end up identifying yourself as red, gold, blue, green," Wiseman said, standing in a hanger at Houston's Ellington Airport.
He and his crew mates were speaking Saturday in front of dozens of NASA officials, affiliates and astronauts in their first public comments since completing the historic mission. Wiseman pivoted to face the NASA astronaut corps.
"We would be remiss if the four of us didn't look right there and say, ‘It is time to go,’" he said. "And be ready, because it takes courage. It takes determination. And you all are freaking going, and we are going to be standing there supporting you every single step of the way in every possible way."
For NASA, the baton is being passed in the coming days. After Artemis II — the first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years — will come Artemis III, a critical mission for the ultimate goal of landing humans on the moon.
What's next for Artemis II
It only took minutes following Friday night’s splashdown for NASA to officially label the Artemis II mission as completed, lasting a total of 9 days, 1 hour and 32 minutes.
"The mission is over," said Robert "Steve" Provence, an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas and a former NASA employee. "But in a lot of ways, the work has just begun."
The four crew members — Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen — will do their postflight reconditioning, medical and human performance evaluations, and lunar science debriefs in Houston.
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For example, each of the crew members participated in the Spaceflight Standard Measures experiment, which began in 2018, to create a comprehensive overview of the effects of spaceflight on humans. As part of the experiment, each of the astronauts submits blood, saliva and urine samples before, during and after the mission. Other tests evaluate their ocular and brain health.
Those tests could yield crucial results because the mission went deeper into space than NASA has been in half a century, according to Scott Solomon, a biologist at Rice University who wrote "Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds."
"[The moon] is beyond the protection of Earth's magnetic field," Solomon said on Houston Matters. "We don't know nearly as much about the effects of that kind of deep space radiation on the human body as we do about what happens to astronauts within the magnetic sphere."
The crew is expected to give their first formal news conference post-splashdown at the Johnson Space Center on Thursday. Roughly a month after their splashdown, the crew will begin "all of their appearances and tours," a NASA spokesperson said.
NASA officials will also spend time evaluating the Orion spacecraft, which carried the astronauts, and its performance during the mission. Perhaps most notably, that includes an evaluation of the spacecraft's heat shield, which protected the crew as it reentered the Earth's atmosphere, withstanding temperatures around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
During the Artemis I mission in 2022, gases generated in a heat-absorbing layer of material called Avcoat were not properly ventilated, leading to charring and cracks in the heat shield. NASA said that, had there been a crew on Artemis I, they would have been safe.
Because the heat shield was already attached to the Orion capsule for the Artemis II mission by the time those issues had been identified, NASA officials have said they could offset the gas buildup in Avcoat by changing the way the crew flies down to Earth. That meant coming through the atmosphere a lot faster — which also meant spending less time in the extreme heat of the atmosphere.
"Every square inch of that heat shield will go under a microscope," Provence said. "Any kind of imperfection that was caused by the reentry, it goes down to just the most detailed microscopic evaluations."
Other systems will be redesigned. Part of an oxidizer in the propulsion system was leaking helium into its pressuring system and will be redesigned, NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said. There also were issues with the spacecraft toilet and its wastewater vent.
Artemis III
Like a good Hollywood sequel, the Artemis II mission was a phenomenon in the public eye, more so than its 2022 predecessor. Casual space watchers and skeptics may be itching for more historic missions from NASA. But Artemis III may seem less "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" and more "The Godfather Part III."
NASA officials argue such a read mischaracterizes the importance of the mission.
"For as clean as this mission was, it's almost unthinkable to imagine we would go around the moon in Artemis II, celebrate this moment, and then wait three more years before we actually attempt to land on it," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said on The Today Show Monday morning.
As soon as 2027, the Artemis III mission will take a crew in the Orion spacecraft into low Earth orbit, relatively the same distance as the International Space Station is from the Earth's surface. While in space, the spacecraft will test operations from commercial lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Such a mission was not originally in the plans for the Artemis program. Isaacman announced the overhaul of the program in March, with the goal of increasing the pace of lunar missions.
SpaceX and Blue Origin have both been tapped to create the lunar modules, called Human Landing Systems (HLS), for future Artemis missions. With those companies facing delays, NASA officials say they're prepared to test the Artemis III mission with one or both of the landers. The mission will involve what NASA calls proximity operations, which can be summed up roughly as operations where space vehicles are close together, whether to dock or just to be near each other.
As for a crew on the Artemis III mission, NASA's Kshatriya stated there would be an announcement "soon" but did not elaborate. Isaacman stated NASA is preparing to put Artemis III's rockets together at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Artemis IV and beyond
Now, NASA is planning for the Artemis IV mission to put Americans back on the lunar surface almost 60 years since the Apollo 11 mission. Though the space agency said the mission is projected for 2028, Isaacman had previously noted that the agency faced several delays with the Artemis I and II missions.
The long-term goal is for the space agency to create permanent lunar infrastructure, including a moon base, which could be used for repeated lunar missions.
"It sounds like sci-fi, but it appears that we are not that far away from it, perhaps," Solomon said. "Compared to Apollo, one of the things that's different now is that they are making plans to be able to not only return people to the moon in the near future, but to create a base — basically a permanent human outpost — on the moon. And we're going to need to be sending people regularly, frequently, and for longer time periods than ever happened during Apollo."
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Whereas the United States was in a well-documented space race with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, NASA is a key player in two major space races this go-around. One involves a race against China to put humans on the moon, which the United States may lose. Though Isaacman did not name China specifically, he alluded to a "real geopolitical rival challenging American leadership in the high ground of space," adding that China is aiming to land on the moon before 2030.
"The difference between success and failure will be measured in months, not years," he said in March. "They may be early, and recent history suggests we might be late."
In his overhaul of the Artemis program, Isaacman said it was vital for NASA to launch lunar missions at a more rapid cadence. Artemis IV is slated for early 2028; Artemis V, potentially, could launch by late 2028. Doing so, Isaacman has said, will train and prepare NASA, including specialists at the Johnson Space Center, to handle lunar missions with improved "muscle memory."
"That's doable, with the funding," Provence said. "We know the technology, we know the process, it's just having the funding vehicle in place to do that.”
Earlier this month, the White House released its budget proposal for 2027, which called for reducing NASA's budget by 23% from current levels, totaling $5.6 billion in cuts. Twice during the Artemis II mission, reporters attempted to ask about the budget cuts in news conferences, but those attempts were shot down by NASA spokespeople.
“You can be fast, but it's expensive — and safe — or, you can be safe, cheaper, but it's going to be slower," Provence said. "There has to be a decision made at the executive level. If we want to go fast, then more money is necessary."
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