Author: César León Jr., Ph.D. Student of Planetary Geology, Washington University in St. Louis

NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission is slated to return astronauts to the Moon no sooner than April 2026. Astronauts were last on the Moon in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission. Artemis II will utilize NASA’s Space Launch System, which is an extremely powerful rocket that will enable human space exploration beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The crew of four will travel in an Orion spacecraft, which the agency launched around the Moon and successfully returned during the Artemis I mission. But before Artemis II, NASA will send two missions to scout the surface of the lunar south pole for resources that…