Blast off! Nasa goes back to the moon

March 31, 2026·30 min·2 clips

Tim Peake describes sitting atop a rocket the size of Big Ben with enough fuel to reach the moon.

The moon mission starts quietly. Artemis 2 is not sold as pure spectacle; the episode keeps coming back to preparation, waiting, and the plain question of whether the launch is safe enough. The scale is still huge. NASA is getting ready to send three men and the first woman around the moon, farther into deep space than humans have gone before. Tim Peake brings the astronaut side down to earth. His description of the run-up to launch sounds less like glamour and more like focus, after years of training narrow into a quieter final stretch. The delays give the episode its spine. A capsule meant for a short International Space Station visit ran into docking problems and leaks, leaving two astronauts in orbit for more than nine months. After that, delay sounds less like foot-dragging and more like the normal price of doing dangerous work carefully. The guest is direct about safety. NASA and its partners may frustrate people by waiting, but the message is simple: they should not fly until the mission is safe. Private spaceflight comes in without a victory lap. The host asks whether figures such as Bezos and Musk have got in NASA's way, and the answer treats SpaceX and Blue Origin as useful partners. Practical ones, not miracle workers. The mission sequence is kept clear. Artemis 2 sends astronauts around the moon. Artemis 3 tests docking in lunar orbit. Artemis 4 is presented as the planned return to a human landing. The first landing since 1972 is left feeling less like a heroic countdown than a chain of tests, delays, partnerships, and decisions that all have to work.

As heard by us

A clear, grounded look at Artemis 2, where moonshot wonder meets NASA's slow discipline of risk and safety.

Today in Focus treats Artemis 2 as more than launch spectacle: a public test of ambition, risk, engineering patience, and the private partnerships now wrapped into NASA's moon plans.

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Why you'd press play

Humans are going around the moon this week -- here is what you actually need to know.

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