Nasa picks possible landing sites for Moon mission

The last humans to walk on the moon were Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on December 14, 1972

It has been nearly 50 years since humans last set foot on the moon.

But, now Nasa is set to send humans back to the moon in their Artemis III mission and make history.

The mission won't happen until at least September 2026, but Nasa have been working on the plans for a long time.

Engineers and scientists have analysed lots of data to choose where to land and they have now selected nine possible lunar landing locations.

All nine potential sites selected are near the lunar south pole.

Each site has been chosen to provide flexibility for the mission and also for their science value.

But each of the regions will be further checked out by scientists and engineers before a decision is made.

This is likely to be decided once Nasa have identified the mission's target launch date.

Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the Moon in 1969

The Moon's south pole has never been explored by astronauts before, so scientists hope the mission could shed a new light on the history of our solar system and its planets.

“The Moon’s south pole is a completely different environment than where we landed during the Apollo missions,” says Sarah Noble, the Artemis lunar science lead at Nasa headquarters.

“It offers access to some of the Moon’s oldest terrain, as well as cold, shadowed regions that may contain water and other compounds.

"Any of these landing regions will enable us to do amazing science and make new discoveries.”