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This image shows nine candidate landing regions for NASA’s Artemis III mission, with each region containing several potential sites for the first crewed landing on the Moon in more than 50 years. The background image of the South Pole lunar terrain

A EspaceX The spacecraft lander will land with the first people to walk on the Moon since 1972 on one of the nine sites of the lunar South Pole during the Artemis 3 missions, NASA announced Tuesday.

The space agency revealed for the first time largest group of potential landing zones in August 2022. Over the past two years, NASA’s interagency site selection analysis team successfully narrowed down the initial 13 landing candidates to nine locations.

To narrow down candidate sites, a team of scientists and engineers used data from a NASA spacecraft currently flying around the Moon, known as Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), as well as lunar scientific research.

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“The Moon’s South Pole is a completely different environment than where we landed on the Apollo missions,” said Sarah Noble, NASA’s Artemis lunar scientist. “It provides access to some of the oldest terrain on the Moon, as well as cold, shaded regions that may contain water and other compounds. Each of these landing regions will allow us to conduct research amazing scientists and make new discoveries.”

The teams considered several factors, including scientific potential, terrain, lighting and compatibility of the landing trajectory with NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, the Orion spacecraft and SpaceX Spacecraft.

The lunar South Pole is an area of ​​the Moon completely unexplored by humans and contains places that are permanently shrouded in darkness.

NASA has credited SpaceX with first contact with the Artemis human landing system, during which the private company will land the first humans on the Moon since Apollo 17. Artemis 3 is expected to last a week at the South Pole.

The final landing site will not be determined until NASA chooses its target launch dates for the Artemis III mission.

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