Artemis 3 will land a crew at the Moon's south polar region. It is planned to have two astronauts on the surface of the Moon for about one week. The mission is intended to be the first to place a woman on the Moon. While up to four astronauts would leave Earth on board Orion, the surface mission with the HLS will consist of two crew members, who will remain on the surface for 6.5 days. The remaining astronauts will stay on board the Gateway / Orion orbital complex. The two astronauts will conduct up to four spacewalks on the surface of the Moon, performing a variety of scientific observations, including sampling water ice. Before the Artemis 3 landing, some additional equipment will be pre-positioned on the surface, including an unpressurized rover for astronauts to use during their spacewalks. This rover will have the capability to be controlled remotely. Several permanently shadowed regions could be reached by short forays of, well within the range of the unpressurized rover.
Spacecraft
In May 2019, NASA selected eleven companies to produce studies of a multi-element landing system that would be staged on the Lunar Gateway previous to the docking of the Artemis 3 crew. These are termed "transfer element", the "descent element" to take the crew down to the Moon's surface, and an "ascent element" that would take them back to the Gateway. After Artemis 3, it is intended to make these systems reusable through refueling.
Development
Upon the December 2017 ratification of the Trump administration's Space Policy Directive 1, a crewed lunar campaign – later known as the Artemis program – utilising the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and a space station in lunar orbit was established. Originally billed as Exploration Mission-3, the goal of the mission was to send four astronauts into a near-rectilinear halo orbitaround the Moon and deliver the ESPRIT and U.S. Utilization Module to the lunar space station, known as the Gateway. By May 2019 however, ESPRIT and the U.S. Utilization Module – now called HALO – were re-manifested to fly separately on a commercial launch vehicle instead. Artemis 3, as it was now billed, was repurposed to accelerate the first crewed lunar landing of the Artemis program by the end of 2024, with a profile that would've seen the Orion MPCV rendezvous with a minimal Gateway made up of only the Power and Propulsion Element and a small habitat/docking node with an attached commercially-procured lunar lander known as the Human Landing System. By early 2020, plans for Orion and the HLS to rendezvous with the Gateway were abandoned in favour of a solo demonstration of Orion and HLS, and development of the Gateway independent of the Artemis program.
