Author：Wall Street CN

At 6:35 p.m. Eastern Time on April 1, Artemis II launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Four astronauts boarded the Orion spacecraft and headed for the moon.

The last time humans traveled this far was in 1972. That year, Apollo 17 landed on the lunar surface and carried away the last batch of lunar rock samples.

NASA has spent $93 billion to send humans back to the moon.

Many people's first reaction is: Haven't we already been there? Why go again?

First, we need to figure out whether or not we're going to the moon this time.

It should be noted that this mission is to orbit the moon; no one will set foot on the moon.

The spacecraft launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 PM Eastern Time on April 1st. It spent the first 24 hours in Earth orbit before heading towards the Moon. It was scheduled to fly past the far side of the Moon on the sixth day of its mission, then use the Moon's gravity to deflect it back to Earth along an arc-shaped trajectory, expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10th. The entire mission took approximately 10 days, with four people aboard the spacecraft; no one landed on the ground.

But this flight has one astonishing statistic: the spacecraft will reach a distance of approximately 407,000 kilometers from Earth, surpassing the human deep-space record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. These four people will be the farthest-flying humans in over half a century.

In terms of orbit design, this one is more like Apollo 13 than Apollo 8.

Apollo 8 had to ignite its engines multiple times to enter lunar orbit and then ignite again to separate from the moon. This time, the mission bypassed the moon and bounced back, without needing to enter a stable lunar orbit, resulting in fewer engine ignitions and theoretically lower risk.

What are we going there for this time? To put it bluntly, we're testing the spacecraft.

The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft had only flown unmanned once before, in 2022. This is their first time carrying astronauts into deep space. Life support, communication, and navigation systems will need to be validated in a real mission. Before launch, the crew will stop in Earth orbit to carefully check the life support systems and ensure they are functioning correctly before igniting the rocket and heading towards the moon.

Therefore, this is the last official rehearsal before NASA's next manned lunar landing.

The return journey was the most dangerous part. The spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere at a speed approaching 40,000 kilometers per hour, with a surface temperature of approximately 2,760 degrees Celsius. During the Artemis I mission, the heat shield experienced abnormal erosion.

Who are the four astronauts?

Commander Reed Wiseman, a retired Navy aviator, visited the International Space Station in 2014 with his two daughters. When asked if he was afraid of the flight, he said he wasn't, but he was worried about his daughters. "I could have given them a stable life," he said.

He said, "But I saw the same fire in their eyes as I did. So we can't stop." Regarding teamwork, he also said, "Every ship needs a captain, and I'm ready to make decisions, but not by myself."

Pilot Victor Glover, who has experience flying to the space station, will become the first African American to fly into deep space.

Mission specialist Christina Koch, who started as an electrical engineer at NASA and later became an astronaut, spending a full year at an Antarctic research station, will become the first woman in history to fly into low Earth orbit.

She said, "We have the opportunity to answer what may be the most important question of our lives: Are we alone in the universe? To answer this question, let's start with the moon."

Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen was making his space debut and becoming the first non-American astronaut to fly into deep space—a feat never before accomplished by a Canadian.

Why didn't I go in 2024?

Originally scheduled for launch in 2024, the launch has been repeatedly delayed.

The problem lies in three places:Artemis I experienced abnormal corrosion of its heat shield upon reentry, indicating substandard material performance; the life support system's valve circuitry had potential malfunctions; and the launch abort system lacked sufficient power redundancy under extreme conditions, meaning there was insufficient assurance of ejecting personnel in the event of an accident.

In February of this year, the spacecraft was forced to return to the assembly building due to a helium leak, causing the launch date to be postponed again to April. These three issues directly impacted the astronauts' chances of returning alive, forcing the entire project to wait. Engineers readjusted the thermal insulation material structure, replaced some critical electronic systems, and increased safety redundancy.

On launch day, with the countdown ending about an hour and a half in, NASA discovered an anomaly in the flight termination system—a system designed to send commands to destroy the rocket in the event of a loss of control, thus protecting public safety. Without this safeguard, NASA would not have risked launching. Fortunately, the problem was resolved within minutes, without significantly impacting the countdown.

As Sean Quay, the ground systems project manager, once aptly put it, "The spacecraft is ready, the rocket is ready, the ground is ready, all we have to do is wait for the weather." The weather forecast for launch day indicated that there was only a 20% chance of severe weather during the launch window.

Since we've already been there, why go again?

This question deserves a serious answer. The purpose of the Apollo moon landing in 1969 was simple: the Cold War, but the logic this time is completely different.

The moon has things that are rare on Earth.

Rare earth elements, iron, titanium, and helium. More importantly, there's water; large amounts of water ice have accumulated in the permanently shadowed crater at the lunar south pole. This ice can provide drinking water and can also be electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen—one for rocket fuel, and the other for breathing air.

With water, a lunar base can truly function, instead of having to transport supplies from Earth each time. This mission also has a specific objective: to photograph the lunar south pole region from an altitude of 4,000 to 6,000 kilometers above the lunar surface, providing a reference for future manned landings and lunar base site selection.

The moon is also a necessary step before going to Mars.

NASA's ultimate goal is Mars, with plans to send humans there around the 2030s. However, even at its closest point, Mars is 55 million kilometers away, resulting in a 20-minute communication delay each way. The Moon, at 380,000 kilometers, offers more opportunities to address any issues. The cost of experimenting with technologies like life support, power generation, and radiation protection on the Moon is far less than on Mars.

Libby Jackson, the science museum’s director of space exploration, put it bluntly: “If these technologies malfunction for the first time on Mars, the consequences could be catastrophic.”

Scientifically, there are still many things we don't understand about the Moon. The rocks brought back by Apollo told us how the Moon came to be, but that was just the beginning. The Moon has no plate tectonics, no wind and rain erosion; the early geological record of the solar system is preserved almost intact. There are likely many more discoveries waiting to be made in these unexplored areas.

But there is a more fundamental question, which Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, asks very clearly: What exactly can humans do on the moon?

He categorized possible futures into several types: if one could survive using local lunar resources and conduct economically valuable activities, then the moon could become a true settlement; if one could make money but still rely on Earth for supplies, then the moon would be more like a North Sea oil field—dangerous but profitable; if one could only survive on government funding, then it would be like an Antarctic research station—capable of scientific research, but its scale would always be limited. "We don't know the answers yet," he said. "One of the purposes of exploration is to figure out which future is truly feasible."

Everyone is staring at the moon.

The Artemis program was never a one-man project from the beginning. Space agencies from Canada, Japan (JAXA), Italy (ASI), and several European countries participated, sharing the specific work of building the lunar base.

Meanwhile, China's lunar program continues to advance, with the Chang'e series having successfully completed multiple landings and sample collections, and plans to achieve a manned lunar landing by 2030. China and Russia are also jointly advancing the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) program, aiming to establish their own lunar base around 2035.

All attention is focused on the lunar south pole. There, water ice exists, the terrain is relatively stable, and the sunlight conditions are conducive to energy production.

There's an unresolved legal issue. The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty states that no country can claim ownership of the moon. However, the treaty doesn't explicitly address whether mining and using resources on the moon constitutes possession. The 1979 Moon Agreement attempted to designate lunar resources as a "common heritage of mankind" and establish a unified mining mechanism, but only 15 countries ratified it, none of which are major spacefaring nations, essentially meaning no one recognizes it.

In 2015, the United States passed legislation explicitly authorizing its citizens to exploit space resources. Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan subsequently followed suit, enacting their own legislation to protect the lunar resource rights of their companies. Dr. Helen Sharman, Britain's first astronaut, aptly summarized this reality: "You don't own the land, but you work on it, and no one has the right to interfere."

To define the boundaries of this legal gray area, the United States spearheaded the Artemis Accords in 2020. This accord is not a formal treaty and has no binding force, but it sets forth a set of guidelines, including principles such as transparency, avoidance of interference, and resource extraction rights.

As of January 2026, 61 countries had signed the agreement. Russia criticized it as a unilateral framework led by the United States, while China did not participate due to US legal restrictions on NASA's cooperation with Chinese institutions. The two countries instead started their own initiative to jointly advance the international lunar research station program.

In this way, lunar exploration has actually formed two camps: one is the US-led system based on the Artemis Accords, and the other is an independent path led by China and Russia.

Private companies have already started scrambling for positions.

Beyond the government, private companies are also eyeing lunar resources, and they're moving faster than many people imagined. Seattle-based startup Interlune has signed a letter of intent with Finnish cryogenic equipment company Bluefors, committing to supply it with up to 10,000 liters of lunar helium-3 annually starting in 2028, a contract potentially worth approximately $300 million.

Helium-3 is an extremely rare helium isotope on Earth, with an annual production of less than 25 tons. However, the lunar surface has accumulated an estimated reserve of hundreds of thousands of tons after billions of years of solar wind bombardment.

Its applications are quite specific: cooling quantum computers, using MRI for lung imaging, and as fuel for nuclear fusion—in quantum computing alone, helium-3 costs around $20 million per kilogram. Blue Origin has also signed an agreement to map lunar resources from orbit and conduct on-site assessments on the lunar surface. Japan's iSpace is collaborating with resource extraction company Magna Petra to prepare to send helium-3 collection equipment to the moon.

The existence of these companies demonstrates one thing: lunar resources are no longer just a future vision in government reports; they already have buyers, contracts, and engineering prototypes. However, it must be made clear that no one has truly succeeded in traversing this path yet.

The mining is difficult, the legal framework is incomplete, and there is a significant funding gap. At this stage, it's more like waiting in line on a racetrack, before the starting gun has even fired.

What does NASA plan to do next?

Just last week, NASA held a press conference in Washington called "Ignition," announcing its seven-year lunar base plan with a total budget of $20 billion. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman made it clear: "NASA's mission was to undertake big, bold projects in aerospace, to do the seemingly impossible. Not just to plant a flag and take pictures. This time, the goal is to stay."

NASA's plan is divided into three steps.The first step is until 2028.21 robot landing missions will be conducted, sending 4,000 kilograms of equipment up to test whether various systems can be used on the moon. The frequency will be rapidly increased from twice in 2026 to once a month.The second phase, from 2029 to 2032.They transported 60,000 kilograms of equipment to build a semi-permanent structure that would allow astronauts to work continuously on the lunar surface.The third step begins in 2033.With a larger cargo lander, manned lunar landings will be conducted every six months, transitioning from short-term visits to true long-term stays.

Regarding the lunar lander, NASA is working separately with SpaceX and Blue Origin. Both companies are required to complete unmanned landing verification before they can send humans on board.

At the press conference, Gretz said that whoever is ready first will fly first.

In addition, NASA abandoned the original "Gateway" plan of building a space station in lunar orbit first and then landing on the moon, and instead built a lunar base directly, integrating the already developed "Gateway" hardware into the new plan.

Artemis III, currently scheduled for 2027, will test the Orion spacecraft's rendezvous and docking capabilities with two commercial landers. Humans are not expected to truly set foot on the lunar surface again until Artemis IV, around 2028.

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