Artemis II Moon crew train for their upcoming trip to the moon.

In 6 months, The Artemis II astronauts are going on a mission for the first time in over 50 years. The crew consists of the three American astronauts Kristina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and the one Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen.

The mission will send four astronauts on a ten-day orbit around the moon. This will test how the spacecraft holds up in deep space with a crew. The crew wore their suits and got on board for training on the Orion spacecraft. The astronauts were trained to control the spacecraft. This allowed them to prepare for launch and do simulations of situations that might occur during the mission. The simulations help the crew adjust to the suit they’ll be using, but also help to check all the equipment and plans so that last modifications can be made ahead of the launch if needed. “Every milestone in the Artemis campaign brings us closer to landing Americans back on the Moon and pushing onward to Mars.” Said Sen Duffy from NASA.

The Artemis II suit is worn inside the spacecraft when they launch, in emergencies, and in high-risk parts of the missions near the Moon and on their descent to Earth. It is designed for each specific astronaut and has lots of built-in tech to help protect the astronauts. It’s not the only spacesuit they’ll wear. In many other cases, they’ll also have another suit to wear outside the spacecraft during space walks, which works like a bubble.

Artemis II is NASA’s first Moon mission after more than 50 years and is a many-part series of increasingly complex missions, as the goal is to succeed at putting a man and a woman on the Moon. The Artemis I mission didn’t have any astronauts on board (except for a sheep), but it was made to fully test the reliability of the Moon kit. In November 2022, it successfully made it into orbit around the Moon.

Artemis II takes it a step further with a crew on board and will circle around the Moon before descending back home. Meanwhile, Artemis III plans to land astronauts on the Moon. The original mission aimed to have people walking on the Moon by the end of 2025, but the mission has been delayed a lot of times. Nasa ended up delaying the Moon mission a year back in able to fix an issue with the spacecraft’s heat shield.