Artemis II is a mission that will send astronauts around the Moon and back as part of the Artemis program. It launched from the Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, and will last about ten days. The crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. They will travel in a path that takes them around the Moon and safely back to Earth. This mission is the second flight of the Space Launch System and the first time the Orion spacecraft will carry humans. It is also the first mission with astronauts going beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The mission is historic because Glover will be the first person of color, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American to go beyond low Earth orbit. They also aim to become the first from these groups to travel near the Moon. Artemis II is expected to break records, including traveling about 7,600 km beyond the Moon and reaching speeds of around 40,000 km/h during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

This mission is mainly a test flight to prepare for future Artemis missions, which plan to land humans on the Moon again by 2028—the first time since Apollo 17. Originally called Exploration Mission-2, it was first planned to support a canceled asteroid mission proposed in 2013. After the Artemis program began in 2017, its goals were updated. The mission is similar to Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon, but its flight path is more like Apollo 13, which also followed a free-return route.