HOUSTON – As NASA prepares for the Artemis II lunar mission, the space agency has unveiled what it calls a state-of-the-art facility that will monitor the spacecraft’s every move.

Located inside NASA’s iconic Mission Control Center in Houston , the Mission Evaluation Room, or MER for short, will house teams of engineers to evaluate Orion’s performance throughout its expected 10-day mission.

The Orion spacecraft is expected to carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a journey around the Moon and back to Earth.

According to the space agency, it will be the first time humans will leave low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the mission is expected to lift off around April 2026.

"The operations

See Full Page