Scientist Shares What to Expect From NASA's Next Moon Mission, Artemis III

Although this trip has been scaled back from the initial landing plans, it will serve as a dress rehearsal for when humans return to the lunar surface.

For years, NASA had hoped to return humans to the lunar surface, and Artemis III was the mission to accomplish this feat. This will no longer be the case.

After the successful flight of Artemis II last April, the program was revised. According to the latest announcements, the next mission will have to wait until 2028, and while the new plans are certainly less spectacular than a moon landing, they're hardly viable.

In 2027, NASA plans to test in Earth orbit whether the Orion capsule can safely rendezvous with and operate the commercial landing systems of SpaceX and Blue Origin before performing the same maneuvers around the moon. WIRED en Español spoke with Artemis III project scientist Barbara Cohen to better understand this upcoming mission—discussing the role humans still play in the face of increasingly capable robots and sensors to what we can learn about the violent past of the solar system from artifacts preserved on the moon.

Artemis II lunar science team members, left to right, Ryan Ewing and Barbara Cohen, react to the crew's observations during the lunar flyby on April 6, 2026.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jorge Garay: What should people expect from Artemis III, and why does the mission matter even if it doesn't land astronauts on the moon?

Barbara Cohen: Artemis III is an Earth orbiting mission. This is what comes next. We will send the Orion capsule with the people in it into orbit. Blue Origin and SpaceX are the companies that build the lunar landers, so each of these companies will build a test article. It won't be a full moon probe, but the companies will send their prototype into Earth orbit to meet Orion. This is to ensure that Orion can meet the lunar landers so that when they go into lunar orbit, they can do so safely.

Where does science fit into the Artemis program, and what have you learned so far about how astronauts can contribute scientifically?

Artemis missions, just to be clear, are not science missions. They are exploring for different reasons. We do this to develop technology. We do it for inspiration. And we try to get the knowledge we can from the opportunity. And so we're still working really hard to identify the unique scientific opportunities that exist because this mission exists.

One of the things we're doing on Artemis III is like a dress rehearsal for bringing samples back from the moon. When we land on the moon and start bringing samples back, as soon as you take them out of their natural environment, those samples change. We try to make sure they change as little as possible, but they will change.

Christina Koch, NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist, looks out one of the windows of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin.

You have to return them and put them in the storage facility so that the scientists can study them. We want to understand every step of the way: what can change the samples, how the samples can react, especially to their environment. So we're going to have our crew use these witness materials - pieces of aluminum foil, pieces of Teflon, maybe pieces of ceramic. They are very clean surfaces, very small pieces, maybe the size of a quarter or a nickel. And the team opens them up and exposes them to the crew cabin during the flight. It gives us a sense of how humans change their environment.

With the capabilities of probes and other robotic tools today, what is the purpose of sending human astronauts into space?

If you just want to take pictures, you do that with robotic assets. Robots can take pictures. They always do. We have many photos in the area. We also have a way on the ISS of asking, "Please take a picture of this. Please take a picture of that." That's not what we did with Artemis II, and that's not what we're trying to do with Artemis III or Artemis IV, V, VI. With the Artemis missions, we're trying to use humans as best we can, and what humans are really good at is seeing a broad scene, zooming in on very natural details, and then trying to interpret what they see and take the next step.

We don't know everything about the moon. To learn more, we have to literally go to the surface and figure out what's there and where to go next, so some of these people are trying to train—not just the flight crew—but the flight managers and the science team and the engineers. We all need to work together so humans can do what they do best.

We also give scientific instructions to the crew. We say, "What do you think is happening in this scene? There's something like a storm or an algal bloom or a fire. What do you see? How do you see the scene change? What do you think this means? What do you think is causing this change? What do you think happens next? If you could do anything, what would you do next?" It helps us understand what they're looking at, which isn't just taking pictures. He observes, understands, infers with their brains. This is what humans are really good at. This is what we want them to do.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen looks out the window of the Orion spacecraft on the third day of NASA's Artemis 2 mission.

From a science standpoint, we've learned a lot about how crews really want to use their powers of observation and how we should participate in observations and train them in the science we want to do. We also had the ability to put science directly into flight. On Artemis II, we had our science officer speak directly to the crew. This was something new that we will take to Artemis III and beyond.

What science questions do you have when humans return to the lunar surface? More like Artemis to help answer?

I have a personal opinion. My personal scientific interest is how old the moon craters are. If you look at the moon - with binoculars or a small telescope, or even in pictures - you will see that it is covered in craters. In fact, we call it saturation, because every hole that forms does so on top of another hole. The entire surface is covered with holes. It's not Earth, but I promise you that for every crater that forms on the Moon, there is one on Earth.

The moon doesn't hit more than the earth, but we have a lot of water. We have erosion on our continents. Our continents move around. They subvert it. We get a new earth that takes shape. All those processes on Earth clear the craters. And so, if we want to know what hit Earth in the past—and I promise you things hit Earth—we can't find that evidence on Earth anymore. We cleared it so we have to go to the moon to figure it out.

There was a period since the formation of the solar system - 4.5 billion years ago, 4 billion years ago. Humans were not around, life had not yet appeared on Earth. We think the solar system was very dynamic, and there were a lot of impacts, a lot of material was being exchanged. So there were a lot of craters—big, big craters, craters the size of basins, craters the size of continents. They really disturbed the moon and they disturbed the earth as well. As I said, we have no evidence because we no longer have any stones from that time. But it is really worth knowing. Did we disturb the earth too many times? How did life go? How do we get nutrients? How did matter move through the solar system? This evidence is preserved on the moon.

There is a large crater called the Antarctic-Aitken basin. It's on the far side of the moon, but it cuts across the moon's south pole, where we expect humans to go. It is my personal wish that humans can pick up pieces of that great crater so we can understand when it formed and what it did to the moon and what was happening in the solar system at that time.

Close-up of Birkhoff Crater on the far side of the Moon, taken by the Artemis II crew.

Artemis III still won't do it. It is currently expected to touch down on the moon as part of Artemis IV, which is expected to lift off in early 2028. Before that, the upcoming third mission should demonstrate something far less spectacular, but very important for the future of the program: that the spacecraft, procedures, and people who will one day fly these missions can safely work together.

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.