Artemis IV: The Complete Mission in Real-Time 3D
September 20, 2027
Experience the Artemis IV mission of September 20, 2027: follow the spacecraft's real Earth-to-Moon trajectory and back, in a real-time 3D reconstruction.
It's September 5, 2027.
Artemis IV: the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo, followed from liftoff to the Moon's south pole and back.
The Starship lifts off from Starbase in Texas, climbing off the pad on its Super Heavy booster.
That blue flame is the Raptor engines burning methane and oxygen, an almost soot-free combustion, unlike the orange exhaust of the kerosene rockets we usually watch launch.
About 121 metres tall, the Starship and its Super Heavy booster stand taller than the Saturn V that launched Apollo: the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.
Hot-stage separation: the booster's ring ignites the ship's engines and the Super Heavy falls away.
The Starship settles into a brief parking orbit around Earth before heading for the Moon.
Trans-lunar injection: the Starship fires its engines and leaves Earth orbit, bound for the Moon.
No one is on board: this Starship flies to the Moon empty, while its four astronauts launch separately in an Orion capsule to catch up with it in lunar orbit.
Aboard Orion ride four astronauts: this mission carries the first woman and the first person of color ever to walk on the Moon.
It is so big because it must carry all its own fuel to land on the Moon and lift off again, is refuelled in Earth orbit by other Starships, and unlike Apollo's rockets is built to fly again.
A multi-day coast across the ~380,000 km to the Moon.
The Moon is a proving ground for Mars: a world three days away to rehearse landing, refuelling and living off Earth, and to reach the water ice frozen in its south-pole shadows.
Insertion into a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO): a huge, elongated near-polar loop swinging ~70,000 km out over the south pole, where Orion waits for the rendezvous.
Rendezvous: the Starship catches the waiting Orion and two of the four astronauts float across into the lander, while the other two stay aboard Orion until their crewmates return.
Near the south apolune the Starship undocks from Orion and begins its descent, leaving Orion on the halo to await the crew's return.
Touchdown. The Starship sets down at the lunar south pole, the first crewed landing since Apollo 17.
The crew steps onto the Moon and plants the American flag, the first bootprints ever left at the south pole.
After the surface stay the Starship lifts off from the Moon, climbing back toward the halo orbit.
Rendezvous with Orion: the Starship re-docks with the waiting spacecraft and the crew transfers over for the trip home.
The crew has transferred into Orion. The capsule pulls away from the Starship and lights its engines, bound for Earth.
What about the Starship? It does not come home. Its job done, it neither crashes into the Moon nor circles it forever: it is sent off into an orbit around the Sun, just like Apollo 10's lunar module before it.
The four astronauts begin the last leg of their voyage: the journey home to Earth. It takes about three days, during which they stow the lunar samples, check over the heat shield, and rehearse the reentry, step by step.
Orion jettisons its service module and turns the crew module heat-shield-forward for the plunge back through the atmosphere.
Entry interface: the capsule slams into the atmosphere at nearly 40,000 km/h, wrapped in a blazing sheath of plasma as its heat shield endures close to 2,800°C. A two-stage 'skip' entry keeps the crew's deceleration to about 4 g.
The parachutes deploy in sequence, slowing the crew module for a gentle ocean landing.
Splashdown. Artemis IV returns humans to the lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years, and the first ever to its south pole.