Blast off for NASA’s Artemis II has been years in the making

No Americans have stepped foot on the moon’s surface since 1972, the last year of NASA’s Apollo lunar missions, which safely landed Neil Armstrong and 11 more astronauts on the surface of the moon.

For years, NASA’s Artemis mission has aimed toward sending people back to the Moon to land on its south pole.

When 60 Minutes first visited in 2021, correspondent Bill Whitaker found the program was largely being run by women. NASA said its goal was to land the first woman on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is NASA’s first female launch director. 

“We talk a lot about the moon, and I think the moon is phenomenal, and I can’t wait to go back,” she told 60 Minutes in 2021. “But when we talk about those young people that may be like me when I was younger, looking up at the night sky and looking up at the moon, I want ’em to look up at the night sky and not be limited to the moon.”

In 2021, NASA signed a nearly $3 billion contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop a version of its Starship mega rocket for Artemis III, the mission to get astronauts back on the moon. Then in 2023, NASA signed a $3.4 billion contract with Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, to build another lunar lander for use on a later Artemis mission.

When 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker visited NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2024, the pricey Artemis mission was facing major delays. Jim Free, who has since retired but who was in charge of Artemis at the time, told 60 Minutes in 2024 that he still believed it was a realistic goal to get astronauts back on the moon by the end of 2026. But as of now, the goal has been moved to 2028. 

Free told 60 Minutes he viewed Artemis as the beginning, not the end. 

“I see us landing on Mars,” he said. “Absolutely see us landing on Mars. But we have to work through the moon to get to Mars.”