For the first time in over 50 years humans are going back to the Moon with NASA’s Artemis II mission.
The mission is the second in NASA’s new program to get astronauts back to the Moon for scientific exploration, eventual permanent habitation, and building the foundation to Mars and beyond.
Artemis II launched on April 1st, 2026 at 6:35 PM. This flight is the first with a crew on board the Space Launch Systems (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft designed for Artemis.
While on their journey to the Moon, the crew of four (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen) will be completing various tests and experiments as the Orion spacecraft flies two elliptical orbits around the Earth before heading traversing toward the Moon.
Once at the Moon, the Artemis II crew will travel about 4,700 miles beyond the far side of the Moon and further than any human has gone before. There they will continue to test the spacecraft. From their position, the crew will see Earth and the Moon together, with the Moon close in the foreground and Earth nearly a quarter-million miles in the background. Quite a sight to behold.
The whole trip will last approximately 10 days and relies heavily on gravity to make it the entire way and back, using the same orbital mechanics the Apollo missions did in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Artemis program was first established in 2017 with the goal of lunar exploration, habitation, and as the stepping stone into our wider cosmological backyard. Like the Apollo program before, the Artemis program of currently five planned missions will push outward from the pale blue dot we call home with more complex and increasingly difficult missions to explore the Moon.
The first Artemis mission, Artemis I, launched near the end of 2022 and was the first true test of NASA’s Deep Space Exploration Systems with the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and upgraded Exploration Ground Systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. This was an unmanned flight to the Moon to test the viability of the technology NASA had been creating and what further hurdles they needed to overcome.
Although, not all their challenges were based in space exploration. In May of 2025, President Trump released his Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request. In the proposal, NASA’s funding was to be cut by 24%, and NASA science faced a 47% cut. These cuts, and the proposed cuts to NASA in the “Big Beautiful Bill”, would’ve spelled doom for the program and overall exploration and habitation of the Moon.
These cuts were amended out of both the “Big Beautiful Bill” and 2026 Budget Request when both passed in Congress and NASA’s funding was continued unimpeded to get us where we are today and for future Artemis missions in the coming years.
Those missions, such as the planned Artemis VI mission in early 2028, will take another crew to the Moon not just to orbit, but to land. Exploring the surface for the first time since 1972. After the Artemis V mission in late 2028, NASA plans to have missions to the Moon roughly once per year.
This is a big moment in space exploration, American history, and overall a beacon of human ingenuity, bravery, and resilience.
