(AFP)The United States will send a crewed mission to the Moon "no earlier than 2025," NASA chief Bill Nelson told reporters on Tuesday, officially pushing back the launch by at least a year. A target of 2024 was set by the administration of former president Donald Trump when it launched the Artemis program. NASA is targeting a first uncrewed mission, Artemis 1, in February 2022, and Artemis 2, the first crewed mission that will perform a flyby of the Moon, in 2024. China, the world's second-largest economy, has put billions into its military-run space program, with hopes of having a permanently crewed space station by 2022. The agency wants to build a sustained habitat on the Moon and use the lessons learned from long expeditions there to develop a crewed mission to Mars by the 2030s.

Source: The Standard November 10, 2021 16:02 UTC