Artemis III Scientist Shares What to Expect From NASA’s Next Lunar Mission

For years, NASA hoped to bring humans back to the moon’s surface, and Artemis III was going to be the mission to accomplish this feat. That will no longer be the case.

Following the successful Artemis II flyby last April, the program’s schedule was revised. According to the most recent announcements, the next mission will have to wait until 2028, and while the new plans are admittedly less spectacular than a lunar landing, they’re hardly dispensable.

In 2027, NASA plans to test in Earth orbit whether the Orion capsule can safely rendezvous and operate with commercial lunar landing systems from SpaceX and Blue Originbefore attempting those same maneuvers around the moon. WIRED en Español spoke with Barbara Cohen, a scientist on the Artemis III project, to better understand this upcoming mission—the conversation ranging from the role humans still play in the face of increasingly capable robots and sensors to...

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