The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module will fly farther from Earth than any human-rated vehicle has ever flown before. This video gives an overview of the first mission – without astronauts – for Artemis, focussing on ESA’s European Service Module that powers the spacecraft.

The spacecraft will perform a flyby of the Moon, using lunar gravity to gain speed and propel itself 70 000 km beyond the Moon, almost half a million km from Earth – further than any human has ever travelled, where it will inject itself in a Distant Retrograde Orbit around the Moon.

On its return journey, Orion will do another flyby of the Moon before heading back to Earth.

The total trip will take around 20 days, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean without the European Service Module – it separates and burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere.

The second Artemis mission will have a simplified flight plan with only a flyby of the Moon but with four astronauts. The third Artemis mission will see astronauts taken to the lunar surface.

The European Service Module is ESA’s contribution to @NASA’s Orion spacecraft that will send astronauts to the Moon and beyond. It provides electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen as well as keeping the spacecraft at the right temperature and on course.

While for decades Mars has been the planet outside Earth that has arguably received the most attention, in recent years, planetary scientists have been setting their sites on our other neighbor: Venus. This strange planet with its hellishly high temperatures and incredible surface pressure will be the site for two upcoming NASA missions and one European Space Agency mission in the next decade, and these agency missions will also be joined by a private space mission from New Zealand-based company Rocket Lab.

Rocket Lab recently shared more details for its planned mission to Venus in a publication in the journal Aerospace. With a planned launch in 2023, it will be the first private mission to Venus and will use Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket and Photon spacecraft.

The aim of the mission is to investigate whether anything could be living in the thick clouds of Venus. This topic received international attention in 2020 when a study suggested that there could be phosphine, a potential indicator of life, in the Venusian clouds. However, subsequent research suggested that the indicator was likely only sulfur dioxide, a common gas not particularly related to life. Even so, the potential for microscopic life to exist on Venus has been long been debated, as the planet was once similar to Earth.