Answering Reader Questions: NASA Prepares for Return to the Moon

NASA's lunar-exploration program known as Artemis aims to bring human explorers back to the Moon -- specifically, the unexplored south pole region -- by 2024.

Once on the Moon, Artemis astronauts will be tasked with finding water and other essential resources for long-term exploration. The teams will learn how to live on its surface and demonstrate technologies that will support an eventual mission to Mars.

The engineering testing ground of the Moon will help NASA understand the effects of long-duration spaceflight on humans, along with other important exploration tasks like habitat building and technology demonstrations.

NASA’s powerful new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), will send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit. Astronauts will dock Orion at an orbital outpost known as the Gateway and transfer to a human landing system for expeditions to the surface of the Moon.

In a live Tech Briefs-led presentation titled Artemis: Back to the Moon, readers had the following questions for Nujoud Fahoum Merancy, Chief of the Exploration Mission Planning Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Read Merancy's responses, and share questions and comments of your own at the bottom of each article.