At 6:24 pm Eastern, NASA is scheduled to launch four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon. The launch is part of the Artemis program, which hopes to return humans to the moon by the end of the decade and establish a bona fide base on the lunar surface.
This launch is part of a bigger, global push to return to the moon. So, this morning, we’re looking at what’s driving the new space race — and where it’ll blast off in the future.
Since 2023, government space agencies, nonprofits, and private companies from Russia, India, China, and Japan have all attempted lunar landings to mixed (but generally successful) results. South Korea launched its first lunar orbiter, Danuri, in 2022. Israel also attempted an unmanned moon landing in 2019, though its craft suffered an engine failure.
America’s last lunar venture went down in February 2024, when the US landed [an unmanned lunar spacecraft called Odysseus](https://www.vox.com/24081504/moon-landing-nasa-odysseus-intuitive-machines-artemis-mars) near the moon’s south pole; its first in 50 years. Odysseus carried six NASA experiments and six commercial items, including a Jeff Koons sculpture.
If all goes to plan, Artemis II will mark [the first time](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00964-4) humans have travelled into deep space since the Apollo program. (The astronauts are orbiting — but won’t land on — the moon.) They could also set a new record for distance travelled from earth.
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At 6:24 pm Eastern, NASA is scheduled to launch four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon. The launch is part of the Artemis program, which hopes to return humans to the moon by the end of the decade and establish a bona fide base on the lunar surface.
This launch is part of a bigger, global push to return to the moon. So, this morning, we’re looking at what’s driving the new space race — and where it’ll blast off in the future.
**The space race is back on**
It’s been many moons since a human last set foot on the lunar surface. But over the past five years, unmanned missions and lunar flybys like Artemis II [have become markedly more frequent](https://www.vox.com/science/2023/8/24/23844280/india-moon-landing-russia-crash-lunar-south-pole-science-consequences-junk).
Since 2023, government space agencies, nonprofits, and private companies from Russia, India, China, and Japan have all attempted lunar landings to mixed (but generally successful) results. South Korea launched its first lunar orbiter, Danuri, in 2022. Israel also attempted an unmanned moon landing in 2019, though its craft suffered an engine failure.
America’s last lunar venture went down in February 2024, when the US landed [an unmanned lunar spacecraft called Odysseus](https://www.vox.com/24081504/moon-landing-nasa-odysseus-intuitive-machines-artemis-mars) near the moon’s south pole; its first in 50 years. Odysseus carried six NASA experiments and six commercial items, including a Jeff Koons sculpture.
If all goes to plan, Artemis II will mark [the first time](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00964-4) humans have travelled into deep space since the Apollo program. (The astronauts are orbiting — but won’t land on — the moon.) They could also set a new record for distance travelled from earth.
“It is a fact: We’re in a space race,” former NASA administrator Bill Nelson [told Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/01/we-better-watch-out-nasa-boss-sounds-alarm-on-chinese-moon-ambitions-00075803).
This is a race between:
– A Drunk American Techbro, that keeps throwing up before the race starts
– An European sleeping in a hammocks
– Whatever India and China are doing