Home > Ephemeris Program, NASA, Space exploration > Ephemeris: 10/02/2025 – The Artemis 2 mission may launch early next year

Ephemeris: 10/02/2025 – The Artemis 2 mission may launch early next year

October 2, 2025

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Thursday, October 2nd. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 38 minutes, setting at 7:20, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:43. The Moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 3:10 tomorrow morning.

The Artemis 2 mission to send the crew around the moon and back is slated for early next year, which surprised me a bit because the launch window was moved up to earlier next year to between February 5th and April 26 about 2 1/2 months. That doesn’t mean that the mission could slip to later in the year, recalling the delays of the Artemis 1 mission. This mission is to send four people in the Orion capsule around the moon. It is crewed by three Americans and a Canadian, three men and a woman, three whites and a black. They’re the same four astronauts. I’m sure the current administration would have screamed DEI, if it wasn’t too late to break up the crew.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

This is the planned Artemis 2 flight trajectory.
This is the planned Artemis 2 flight trajectory. Unlike Apollo 8, that dropped into close orbit of the Moon, Artemis 2 will just swing around the Moon and come back to the Earth, like Apollo 13 had to after their accident. This type of orbit is called a free return trajectory. There still needs small tweaks, called mid-course corrections, to ensure that the Orion Capsule enters the Earth’s atmosphere at the correct angle to ensure spacecraft and crew survival. Click or Tap on the image to enlarge it. Credit: NASA.

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