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America is going back to the moon

Artemis II and the new space race, explained

I have yet to see Project Hail Mary, the buzzy space blockbuster starring Ryan Gosling. But who needs science fiction when you have…science reality?

At 6:24 pm Eastern, NASA is scheduled to launch four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon. The launch is part of the Artemis program, which hopes to return humans to the moon by the end of the decade and establish a bona fide base on the lunar surface.

This launch is part of a bigger, global push to return to the moon. So, this morning, we’re looking at what’s driving the new space race — and where it’ll blast off in the future.

Understand the world with a daily explainer, plus the most compelling stories of the day.

The space race is back on

It’s been many moons since a human last set foot on the lunar surface. But over the past five years, unmanned missions and lunar flybys like Artemis II have become markedly more frequent.

Since 2023, government space agencies, nonprofits, and private companies from Russia, India, China, and Japan have all attempted lunar........

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