Sean Dafe, the agency's chief executive officer, said on October 24, that the spacecraft "Lion" carrying out the manned moon flight mission "Alchemist 2" has completed the matching with the new generation of the U.S. moon landing rocket "space launch system", preparing for the execution of the manned mission.

In a post on social media platform X on the same day, Daffy said that the "Integrity" spacecraft, code-named "Lion" and "Space Launch System", had completed the matching, marking an important step in the "Armys 2" mission. The mission plans to send four astronauts to the moon orbit to carry out a manned moon flight. This will be the first manned deep space flight in the United States in more than half a century.

According to NASA, the Orion spacecraft was jointly developed by the agency and Lockheed Martin Company of the United States. It is currently the only spacecraft that can perform manned deep space flight and safely return to Earth.

Lockheed Martin said that after the docking is completed, the mission team will establish power and data connections between the spacecraft and the rocket and conduct integration tests. The entire system is expected to be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida next year for final preparations for launch.

The U.S. announced its Alchemist Moon landing plan in 2019 and carried out the Alchemist 1 unmanned moon flight test mission in November 2022.In December last year, the U.S. Space Agency announced that the Alchemist 2 manned moon flight mission and the Alchemist 3 manned moon landing mission schedule would be postponed again to April 2026 and mid-2027, respectively.