Altair 3

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This article or section documents a scheduled or expected spaceflight.
Details may change as the launch date approaches or more information becomes available.

Altair 3

Mission insignia

Mission statistics

Mission name

Altair 3

Launch pad

Launch Pad 39A

Launch date

November or December 2019

Landing

December 2019

Mission duration

~45 ± 10 days w/ 7 days on lunar surface

Orbital altitude

~200-250 nautical miles (~320-400 km) in LEO

Orbital inclination

~28.5 degrees in LEO

Distance traveled

TBD

Related missions

Previous mission	Next mission
Orion 15 & Altair 2	Orion 19 & Altair 4

Altair 3 is the current designation for the Altair spacecraft that will attempt to make, during the Orion 17 mission, the second Constellation lunar landing, the eighth manned landing in human history, assuming no other space programs reach the moon before then. A landing site has not yet been chosen.^[1]

Altair 3 is currently scheduled to take place in late November or early December 2019. It will be launched atop the powerful Ares V SDLV from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A, and will be linked up in low earth orbit, along with the Earth Departure Stage, by the Orion 17 crew two to four weeks later.

While the Orion 17 mission is planned to last approximately 21 days total, Altair 3 will be on the lunar surface for up to 7 days, and will be discarded after the landing party returns to lunar orbit. After Altair 3 is discarded, it will be left in lunar orbit, in which it will either crash into the lunar surface after its orbit decays (as it happened with the LM Eagle), or it will be deliberately crashed into the surface as NASA did with all of the remaining (except for the LM Aquarius) Apollo LMs from Apollos 12 to 17. The deliberate crashing of all of the LMs by NASA was used to calibrate the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP) seismometers left on the lunar surface.