Nasa says humans on course to live and work on the moon

Astronauts are on course to be living and working on the moon before the end of the decade, according to a Nasa official.

Howard Hu, the head of the US agency's Orion lunar spacecraft programme, said that humans can be active on the moon for a period before 2030, with habitats to live in and rovers to support their work.

We're going to have people living for a long time in the next decade, depending on how long we're going to be on the surface. They will have habitats, they will have rovers on the ground, he told the BBC s Sunday with Laura Kuensberg. He said that we are going to be sending people down to the surface, and they are going to be living on that surface and doing science.

Hu was placed in charge of Nasa's spacecraft for deep-space exploration in February, and he was speaking on Sunday as the 98 metre 322 ft Artemis rocket powered towards the moon on its first uncrewed mission.

The giant rocket, which is topped with the Orion spacecraft, was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Wednesday after a series of delays due to technical glitches and hurricanes.

The spacecraft is equipped with three fully suited mannequins that will register the stresses and strains of the Artemis 1 mission. The rocket is now about 83,000 miles and 134,000 km from the moon.

It is the first step that we are taking to long-term deep-space exploration, not just for the United States, but for the world. This is a historic day for Nasa, but it's also a historic day for all those who love human space flight and deep-space exploration, Hu said.

We are going back to the moon. He said that the vehicle that will carry the people that will land us back on the moon will be the vehicle that we are working towards a sustainable programme.

The spacecraft will fly within 60 miles of the moon and continue for a further 40,000 miles before swinging back around and aiming for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on 11 December. The spacecraft will travel 1.3 m miles on the 25 day mission, the farthest spacecraft built for humans has ever flown.

On entering Earth's atmosphere, the spacecraft will be traveling at about 25,000 mph, sending the temperature of its heat shield up to approximately 2,800 C 5,000 F It is expected to splash down the coast of San Diego.

A successful mission will lead to follow-up Artemis 2 and 3 flights, both of which would send humans around the moon and back. The mission Artemis 3 is expected to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972, although it may not launch until 2026. Under Nasa's plans, that mission would land the first woman on the moon, with a subsequent visit to the first person of color on the lunar surface.

The programme Artemis, named for the twin sister of Apollo, plans to build the Lunar Gateway, a space station where astronauts will work and live as they orbit the moon. Hu told the BBC that moving forward is really to Mars. It is going to be important to learn beyond our earth orbit, because that is a bigger stepping stone, a two-year journey.