NASA may be headed back to the moon months sooner than originally planned, with the agency announcing that the first crewed flight in its Artemis programme could make the trip around the moon and back as early as February.

The space agency’s Artemis programme is the flagship effort by the United States to return humans to the moon, a multibillion-dollar series of missions that rivals a similar effort by China, which is aiming for a 2030 astronaut moon landing.

In the first Artemis mission, an uncrewed spacecraft travelled around the moon and back in November 2022.

The goal of the Artemis II mission, a 10-day flight around the moon and back, is to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”, according

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