From outdated tech to funding hurdles, here’s why astronauts haven’t landed on the moon in over five decades

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida — The US military has always been part of NASA’s human spaceflight program. The first astronauts were nearly all military pilots, and two of the four crew members set to fly around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission were Navy test pilots before joining the astronaut corps.

The astronauts will head into a communications blackout at 6:44 p.m. Eastern time as they become the first people to travel around the moon since 1972.

The SLS did not so much lift from its pad as vault from it, carrying its four-person Artemis II crew—International Space Station veterans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christ