NASA is accelerating plans to send humans back to the moon, with a possible launch as early as 5 February.
The US space agency said the mission to fly four astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years would give people a “front row seat to history”.
It had previously committed to the first crewed flight of its Artemis moon return programme by April next year.
But preparations are ahead of schedule, and it is now more optimistic of an earlier lift off.
Lakiesha Hawkins, one of NASA’s acting deputy associate administrators, told a news conference that the 10-day mission would be a milestone in space exploration.
“We together have a front row seat to history,” she said.
“We are working to accelerate preparations to potentially as early as February, but we want to emphasise that safety is our top priority.”
The crew of three Americans and one Canadian includes the first person of colour and the first woman to head beyond Earth’s orbit.
The launch of Artemis in November 2022. Pic: NASA
The launch was delayed by problems with the first, uncrewed, test flight in 2022.
Most critical was the loss of material from the heatshield that should protect the crew capsule from a temperature of almost 3,000 degrees Celsius during re-entry to the atmosphere.
Engineering fixes have now been completed, and the capsule will be hoisted on top of the rocket in the next few weeks.
NASA then needs to complete a series of systems checks before rolling the rocket out to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
The mission will take 10 days to fly by the moon at a distance of 5,000 miles, then return, with a splashdown off the Californian coast.
If successful, the agency hopes to launch the third Artemis mission in 2027, this time with a crew that will land on the surface.
That looks highly ambitious. SpaceX is due to fly astronauts on the last leg, from lunar orbit down to the surface, in its huge Starship. But development has been badly delayed by a series of explosions.
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NASA is under pressure to catch up with lost time.
China has ramped up its own space programme, landing a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon. It is also testing a rocket that it hopes will launch a human mission to the lunar surface by 2030.
At a news conference to reveal a new class of NASA astronauts, Sean Duffy, the agency’s acting chief, said winning the race would need money and grit.
“I’ll be damned if the Chinese beat NASA or beat America back to the moon,” he said.
“We’re going to win: we love challenges, we love competition. And we are going to win the second space race back to the moon.”
