Apollo played it safe. All six crewed landings touched down near the Moon's equator, in flat, sunlit terrain that was easy to reach and easy to talk to from Earth. The next landing will be nothing like that. When astronauts return to the surface, they are heading for the lunar south pole — a jagged, half-shadowed region no human has ever visited. Here is why.
Ice that never melts
The Moon tilts only slightly on its axis, so at the poles sunlight arrives almost sideways, skimming across the landscape. Deep crater floors near the south pole sit in permanent shadow: some have not seen direct sunlight for billions of years.
That darkness is a deep freeze. In these permanently shadowed regions, temperatures stay low enough that water ice delivered long ago — by comets and asteroids — can survive instead of boiling away into space. Orbiters have detected that ice; researchers still want to know how much is there and how deep it lies.
For explorers, the ice is more than a curiosity:
- Drinking water that does not have to be launched from Earth
- Oxygen, split from the water, for breathing
- Hydrogen and oxygen recombined as rocket propellant
Learning to use local resources like this is the difference between a brief visit and a lasting presence.
Sunlight a short walk away
The same sideways sunlight that hides the crater floors lights up the high ground. Elevated ridges and crater rims near the pole can catch long stretches of near-continuous sunshine — far more than the two weeks of daylight followed by two weeks of night at the equator.
That matters for two practical reasons:
- Solar power for habitats, rovers, and equipment, with far fewer long, dark gaps to bridge on batteries
- Gentler temperatures on the lit ridges than in the frozen shadow nearby
Few places put deep cold and steady sunlight so close together. A landing site can, in principle, reach both.
Old ground, new science
The south polar terrain is also ancient, offering access to some of the Moon's oldest surfaces — material that records the early history of the Earth–Moon system in a way the younger Apollo sites cannot. Sampling polar ice could also help explain how water arrived on the Moon, and how Earth got its own.
NASA has previously identified candidate landing regions in the area, including ground near the craters Cabeus, Haworth, and Nobile, and features such as Malapert Massif and the Mons Mouton Plateau. No final landing region for the first crewed polar mission has been confirmed.
The updated road there
The plan changed in February 2026, and the new sequence is deliberately step-by-step. According to NASA's updated Artemis architecture:
- Artemis II has already flown — a crewed loop around the Moon in April 2026, with no landing.
- Artemis III (2027) no longer lands. Instead, its crew will stay in low Earth orbit to rendezvous and dock with one or both commercial landers — SpaceX's and Blue Origin's — testing life support, communications, propulsion, and the new surface suits where help is close at hand. NASA has named the Artemis III crew for that test flight.
- Artemis IV (early 2028) is now the first crewed landing, and it targets the south polar region.
Testing the landers in Earth orbit first is a way to retire risk before anyone depends on that hardware a quarter-million miles from home.
Why it is hard
- Lighting: at the pole the Sun hugs the horizon, so terrain throws extremely long shadows and glare sits right at eye level.
- Terrain: slopes are rougher and safe, flat spots are smaller than at Apollo's sites.
- Communications: the polar geometry limits direct line-of-sight contact with Earth.
- Dust: lunar dust is sharp, clingy, and hard on seals, joints, and lungs — and polar operations will stir up plenty of it.
None of that outweighs the prize. Ice for life support and fuel, sunlight for power, and the Moon's oldest ground for science: the south pole is where a landing stops being a stunt and starts being a foothold. Artemis IV will be the first test of that idea — follow the program at NASA's Artemis pages.