NASA has a full plate of lunar missions before astronauts can return to Moon

What will it take for NASA to put humans back on the moon? Aside from a still-undetermined sum of cash, the agency will need to launch about 37 moon missions between now and 2028, according to a launch manifest presented at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council on Tuesday (May 21).
The preliminary timeline, which was presented with an infographic labeled as "pre-decisional," is not yet set in stone. But it represents what some agency officials see as the best path to return astronauts to the moon in 2024 and build a sustainable presence on the moon via the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway by 2028.

Of the 37 missions included in the launch manifest, 15 would take place before astronauts get to the moon in 2024. That 16th mission, titled Artemis 3 (formerly called Exploration Mission-3, or EM-3), will be the second crewed flight of NASA's newly named Artemis program.

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