Fifty years after NASA’s sprints to the Moon, the U.S. is preparing for deep-space human travel for the long haul with an exploration blueprint that includes a lunar surface sortie, as early as 2024, full-time global lunar access for crewed and robotic missions, followed by future expeditions to Mars.

Accelerating the schedule for a crewed Moon landing, under a program newly named Artemis, will require $20-30 billion over the next five years, on top of the agency’s baseline annual budget.

NASA insists that Orion is the only spacecraft capable of carrying and sustaining astronauts on missions to deep space safely and SLS is the only rocket with the power and capability required to carry astronauts to deep space on Orion capsules.

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