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Ephemeris: 02/05/2026 – Artemis 3 isn’t going to the Moon

March 5, 2026 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, March 5th. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 22 minutes, setting at 6:36, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:11. The Moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 9:22 this evening.

Late last week NASA announced that the Artemis 3 mission was not going to land on the Moon. It wasn’t even going to the Moon. It would be a low earth orbit test of docking and operations of the Human Landing System or lunar landers, either the SpaceX Starship Lander or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Lander. This reminds me of the Apollo 9 mission which came after the spectacular Apollo 8 mission which orbited the Moon. Apollo 9 was a checkout of the Lunar Lander in low earth orbit. Several Months later, Apollo 10 flew to the Moon to a checkout of the Lunar Lander in lunar orbit. They couldn’t land, but it was a test of the operations in preparation for Apollo 11 which successfully landed on the Moon.

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; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

The Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1 rocket for the Artemis 2 mission out on the launch pad.
The Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1 rocket for the Artemis 2 mission out on the launch pad. As of now, it has been trundled back to the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) to work on a helium leak in the second stage. The two successive upgrdes to Block 1B and 2 have been canceled. It looks like commercial rockets from SpaceX and Blue Origin, which are approaching or already have exceeded its capacity will make the SLS obsolete, and be cheaper too.

Categories: Artemis Program, Ephemeris Program, NASA, Space exploration