The NASA announced this Monday nine possible landing regions for its Artemis III mission, which is scheduled for 2026 and will mean the return of a crew to the lunar surface in more than 50 years.
The US space agency noted that these nine regions located in the vicinity of the South Pole of the natural satellite, an area where scientists believe there could be water, “contain diverse geological features and offer flexibility for mission availability.”
NASA noted in a statement that these regions “will be further investigated through scientific and engineering studies.”
The US space agency plans to send Artemis III to the lunar South Pole, which is an area that “has never been explored by a manned mission and contains permanently shadowed areas that can preserve resources, including water.”
NASA’s Artemis program chief scientist Sarah Noble noted that the Moon’s South Pole is a “completely different environment” than the landing site of the Apollo missions, as it contains some of the “oldest” terrain on earth. satellite, as well as cold and shaded regions that, in addition to water, can host other compounds.
“Any of these landing regions will allow us to make amazing science and new discoveries,” he explained.
Today’s announcement It represents a closing of the range of the initial thirteen possible lunar landing regions for Artemis III that NASA announced in 2022.
For this task, the space agency has a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers who analyze both the information sent by a lunar reconnaissance probe and the vast lunar scientific research carried out by the space agency for decades.
“The sites within each of the nine identified regions have the potential to provide key new insights into our understanding of rocky planets, lunar resources, and the history of our solar system,” the team of NASA geologists estimated, according to the note.
The Artemis III mission is scheduled to take off from Florida (USA) in September 2026 and will do so with four crew members including what will be the first woman and the first African-American man to set foot on the Moon.
The mission will reach the Earth’s natural satellite a year after its predecessor, the Artemis II manned mission, makes the same round trip, but without descending to the lunar surface, according to NASA plans.
In November 2022, the unmanned Artemis I mission took off from Florida, which was the inauguration of NASA’s new SLS (Space Launch System) booster rocket and the Orion capsule, and orbited the Moon and then returned to Earth with success.