The new golden age of Moon exploration

NASA 's Artemis program has evolved into an effort of staggering complexity.

The Artemis 3 mission will land a crew on the Moon no earlier than 2028 - if NASA doesn't settle for a flyby - and the agency will have spent $93 billion to do so.

In 2020 , NASA initiated the Commercial Lunar Payload Services ( CLPS ) project to encourage affordable and rapid delivery of science payloads to the Moon.

Intuitive Machines' IM-3 will attempt to land near the enigmatic swirl-shaped feature Reiner Gamma on Oceanus Procellarum .

The CLPS program will progress in 2026 with the Draper SERIES-2 lander targeting the Schrödinger Basin on the Moon 's farside.

In 2025 , Canada 's Jeremy Hansen will fly on Artemis 2 , becoming the first non-American to go to the Moon.

China has made amazing strides in robotic lunar exploration.

LUPEX is the next opportunity to use a rover-mounted surface drill and spectrometer to search for ice in the Moon 's shadowed south polar region.

Not every mission on this new lunar frontier is a success.

The ongoing surge of interest in lunar exploration represents a new global wave of energy and skill.