NASA is on track to launch a crewed mission around the Moon in November of next year after a successful unmanned test flight, the US space agency said Tuesday.

NASA officials provided an update on the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon for the first time since the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972.

The first Artemis mission wrapped up in December with an uncrewed Orion capsule returning safely to Earth after a more than 25-day journey around the Moon.

Artemis 2, scheduled to take place in late November 2024, will take a four-person crew around the Moon but without landing on it.

"We're looking forward to that crew flying on Artemis 2," NASA associate administrator Jim Free told reporters. "Right now there's nothing holding us up based on what we learned on Artemis 1."

NASA is to reveal the members of the Artemis 2 crew later this year. All that is known so far is that one of them will be a Canadian.

Space travel has always tested the human body by the effects of the new conditions of altered gravity on biological systems. It has long been known that continuous exposure to microgravity conditions human physiology and causes effects that compromise muscular, sensory, endocrine and cardiovascular functions. But is it also risky to be exposed to altered gravity for short periods of time?

Now, a paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica examines the effects of microgravity generated by a parabolic flight on the human immune system. After a short exposure to altered gravity, there were no significant changes in the defensive capacity of blood cells in the volunteers who took part in the study.

Japan's space agency intentionally destroyed a new H3 rocket minutes after its launch Tuesday because the ignition failed for the second stage of the country's first new rocket series in more than two decades.

Coming three weeks after an aborted launch due to a separate glitch, the H3's failure was a setback for Japan's space program—and possibly for its missile detection program—and a disappointment for space fans who were rooting for Tuesday's retrial.

The H3 rocket with a white head blasted off and soared into the blue sky from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan as fans and local residents cheered. It followed its planned trajectory and the second stage separated as designed, but the ignition for it failed, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.