No one in NASA’s Artemis II crew had been born when astronauts last ventured into deep space for the final Apollo program Moon landing in 1972. For the last half-century, human space efforts have focused on science research and technology initiatives aboard low-Earth-orbit spacecraft, culminating with the Inter-national Space Station.

Next month, four astronauts are expected to board a space capsule called Orion, blast off and exit low-Earth orbit for the first time since 1972, en route to a 10-day

CAS Space conducts first suborbital launch and capsule landing test Chinese commercial firm CAS Space launched its first Lihong-1 suborbital flight and recovery test mission, seeing a successful parachute descent of the capsule.