A journey to NASA’s headquarters to mark the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years

Artemis II has blasted itself into the stratosphere and, outside a rocket hangar, a herd of Texas longhorns is grazing in the 30°C  heat, heads bowed, hooves planted, jaws rolling in rhythmic motion. I’ve arrived on site at the world’s foremost hub for manned spaceflight — namely NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas, an employer of thousands of the biggest brains in the country — and the first sight to greet me is a crew of prodigiously horned cattle chewing the Houston cud.

It transpires that the animals are part of an initiative to engage local schoolchildren in science through agriculture. If that seems incongruous, space agencies have always embraced the unexpected. A trip here has long been a highlight of a visit to Houston — which has gone by the nickname of Space City for more than 50 years — but the centre has extra gravitational pull in 2026. ‘Artemis II, baby,’ says my generously bearded NASA guide Reid when we begin our tour, barely containing his excitement. ‘It’s happening.’ The 10-day mission will see four astronauts orbit the Moon in the first flight of its kind since 1972.

To hop onto a visitor minibus and cruise around the Johnson Space Center’s 1,620-acre complex is to enter a kind of alternate reality. On one level, it looks and feels like a university campus — a sun-kissed sprawl of 1960s concrete, open lawns and rucksacked academics — until your attention gets grabbed by a lunar buggy being tested at the roadside or a space shuttle looming over the rooftops. And this is before you set foot inside the buildings themselves. The hangar, for example, holds a titanic, 363ft Saturn V rocket as thick as a giant redwood. It’s a mind-boggling thing to see up close.

At their furthest point from Earth, the Artemis II crew will be about 230,000 miles from home, but for the past 2½ years, the space-bound quartet has been training here in Houston. The fact that the mission is taking place in the 250th anniversary year of American independence, meanwhile, gives the project further oomph — even if one the four astronauts has the temerity to be Canadian.

The centre offers two daily, pre-bookable VIP tours and by reserving spots on both I get treated to behind-the-scenes looks at everything from the 6.2 million-gallon Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory indoor pool — a watery colossus containing full-scale replica modules of the International Space Station (ISS) — to the simulators of the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. ‘Welcome to the astronauts’ playground,’ says Reid, when we set eyes on the wire-sprouting mega-machines of the latter. There’s an air of momentousness about the place, as well there should be. In keeping with all the original Moon missions, the launch itself took place in Florida, but is being controlled from here at the Space Center. The thinking behind this, I learn, is that having a mission headquarters removed from the hubbub of the launch site is believed to give better operational control. The political influence of Texas-born Lyndon B. Johnson — after whom the Space Center is named — helped Houston get the job in the early 1960s, and it’s kept it ever since.

Reid leads the way to Historic Mission Control Center, the very room which guided Apollo 11’s Eagle down onto the lunar surface and where Apollo 13’s stricken ‘Okay, Houston… we’ve had a problem here’ was first received. Coffee cups and filled ashtrays — original, apparently — still line the console desks. When we arrive, the lights dim and the screens crackle to life to replay audio and video footage of the last couple of minutes of the final descent from the original Moon landing. The goosebumps come quickly. Within the same multi-level building is the present Mission Control — sleeker and shinier than its predecessor — which guides Artemis II. On my visit, before the launch, a link-up with the ISS is under way. Experts huddle under headphones, studying data. The screens above them hold graphs, maps and live images of astronauts floating from pod to pod. One feed displays the current view of the planet from an on-board camera: a shifting, cloud-dappled fantasy of green and blue. It’s mesmerising, pinch-yourself stuff.

As a destination, Houston makes a fitting base for a complex so, well, astronomical. Everything about the city is big. It’s the fourth largest metropolis in the USA, home to some 2.3 million residents. It’s subtropical, skyscraper-studded and eccentrically all-American, with labyrinthine underground shopping centres (or malls), dimly lit late-night joints—‘the stairs are dangerous’, one local tells me, pointing out old-time bar La Carafe, ‘but the drinks are good’ — and petrol that seems surprisingly pricey ($2.79, about £2.07) until I realise the price is per gallon rather than per litre.

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This might be famed as oil country, but it is also a place of surprises. Houston votes blue in a state of red. It has the world’s largest medical centre, a string of incredible Vietnamese restaurants and a population that collectively speaks some 145 languages. Its evergreen oaks buzz with the insect-drone of cicadas and its annual livestock show is the planet’s biggest. I spot two driverless cars on its busy roads, a concept as head-spinning to me as any moonshot, and hear tales of alligators in Buffalo Bayou, the slow-moving river that flows through the city. Even away from the NASA complex, there are signs of the city’s cosmic heritage all over the place, too. This is, after all, somewhere that still revels in the fact that the first word broadcast by Neil Armstrong after landing Lunar Module Eagle was ‘Houston’. Its central green space is named Tranquillity Park in honour of the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, one of the top craft breweries in town is Bad Astronaut — complete with a cheekily titled, hazy IPA named Fake Landing — and its ardently followed major league baseball team are called the Astros (more than once, Houston-trained astronauts in space have asked Mission Control for updates on the team’s progress).

It might be on the edge of things in terms of the national map—the iconic east-west American highway of Route 66, which marks its centenary this year, passes almost 500 miles away to the north—but it’s played a key role in domestic affairs ever since Texas was incorporated into the US in 1845. Its sense of self-confidence is well illustrated by Houston-born superstar Beyoncé, whose much-quoted song refrain (‘This is how they made me/Houston, Texas, baby’) captures something of the local sense of pride.

At street level, it’s a fascinating place to visit. I spend hours at Art Club, a former post office distribution centre reinvented as an avant-garde art gallery. I attend a packed Astros game, which is a riotously enjoyable carnival of diving catches and home-run fireworks, and I head to Republic Boot Co, specialising in rodeo boots and cowboy hats, where I’m offered a shot of cinnamon whisky within minutes of walking through the door (it is 12 noon). ‘You’re in town for the Space Center?’ asks the store’s young hat-shaper, James. ‘I have family working at NASA, making spacesuits. But hey—everyone round here has family working at NASA.’

Back at the Johnson Space Center, I pass my final morning in the main visitor building, touring its permanent exhibits of spacecraft and other artefacts. Among the many highlights are memorabilia from the Mercury and Gemini spaceflight programmes of the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the still-intact spacesuit worn by mission commander Pete Conrad for the Apollo 12 mission, with lunar dust still visible on its legs. Gazing at all this, it’s the sense of sheer, otherworldly ambition that hits you. Nearby, above a vast display given over to the Artemis project, a sign reads ‘We Are Going Back To The Moon’. If this year’s mission goes well, the plan is for the subsequent manned flight, Artemis III, to touch down on the lunar surface for what would be the first time in more than half a century. Before then, of course, Artemis II needs to return safely to Earth. The longhorn cattle won’t be aware of a thing, but Houston and the rest of the world will.

The writer stayed at Four Seasons Houston, Texas, US, where rooms start from $550 (about £410) per night. Visit the website for more information and to book.