Below the Fold
After the Moonshot, the Moon Work Begins
Artemis II was NASA's first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years: 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes; four astronauts; SLS from Pad 39B; Orion around the Moon; Pacific recovery on April 10, 2026.
The NewsstandScience desk / Moon campaign
After the Moonshot, the Moon Work Begins
Artemis II was NASA's first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years: 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes; four astronauts; SLS from Pad 39B; Orion around the Moon; Pacific recovery on April 10, 2026.
The hard part after the flyby is docking Orion to commercial landers, then surviving a week of useful work near the lunar South Pole.
Moon to MarsLead feature / Deep-space return
Artemis II Turned the Moon Back Into a Destination
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen launched April 1, splashed down April 10, and pushed Orion through the first crewed Artemis lunar test.
The mission ledger is concrete: launch from Kennedy Space Center, 9 days 1 hour 32 minutes in flight, farthest distance 252,756 miles from Earth, closest lunar approach about 4,067 miles above the surface, splashdown in the Pacific.
The operational tests were the real article: Orion displays, manual handling, life support, exercise, emergency gear, suit behavior, communications loss behind the Moon, reentry heating, parachutes, and Navy-led recovery.
Artemis III is not a landing; NASA says it will test rendezvous and docking in low Earth orbit with commercial spacecraft. Artemis IV is the planned surface return, sending two astronauts near the South Pole for roughly a week.
Photo desk
The Flight in Four Frames
Crew room
Four Names in the Loop
Commander
Reid Wiseman
Wiseman flew 165 days on the ISS in 2014 and later served as NASA chief astronaut; Artemis II put that station discipline into deep-space command.
Pilot
Victor Glover
Glover piloted SpaceX Crew-1 in 2020 and spent 167 days on the ISS; on Artemis II he helped prove Orion as a crewed cockpit.
Mission specialist
Christina Koch
Koch logged 328 continuous days in space and joined the first all-woman spacewalk; Artemis II turned that endurance into lunar test work.
Mission specialist
Jeremy Hansen
Hansen, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut and former fighter pilot, became the first Canadian assigned to a lunar mission.
Roadmap
From Flyby to Foothold
April 2026
NASA lists the mission at 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes: launch, lunar flyby, reentry, splashdown, and recovery with four people aboard.
Target: 2027
NASA describes the next test as low-Earth-orbit rendezvous and docking between Orion and commercial spacecraft from SpaceX and/or Blue Origin.
Target: early 2028
NASA's surface-return plan sends two crew members near the lunar South Pole for about a week before rejoining Orion in lunar orbit.
Target: late 2028
The next surface campaign is about logistics: cargo, mobility, tools, power, communications, and enough repetition to learn from failure.
Long horizon
Moon-to-Mars planning uses the lunar campaign to test autonomy, repair, radiation discipline, crew health, and supply chains far from Earth.
Hardware desk
The Machines Still Have to Agree
System
Orion
Orion is the crew cabin, service module, launch-abort stack, heat shield, parachute system, and ocean-return spacecraft in one architecture.
System
SLS
NASA's Space Launch System stands 322 feet tall in Block 1 form and produces about 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
System
Commercial landers
SpaceX Starship HLS and Blue Origin Blue Moon Mark 2 make Artemis a docking-and-transfer problem, not only a launch problem.
System
Spacesuits
A lunar suit must handle dust, cooling, oxygen, communications, gloves, boots, tool use, and hours of walking in one-sixth gravity.
System
Heat shield
Orion's Avcoat heat shield is roughly 16.5 feet across, the part that has to survive lunar-return reentry before parachutes matter.
System
Mission control
Artemis now ties Johnson, Kennedy, recovery forces, ESA's service module, commercial landers, suit teams, and science planners into one clock.
Risk ledger
The Hard Parts Are the Story
Surface return
Lander readiness decides the pace
NASA now puts rendezvous and docking before the surface return. The landing depends on Orion meeting a commercial lander, crew transfer, suit readiness, and a clean path back to Earth.
Watch list
What must work
- Orion-to-lander docking
- Suit and cabin interfaces
- Heat shield margins
- Mission-control handoffs
- Surface power and comms
Moon base
From sortie to system
The late-decade surface campaign becomes real only when cargo, tools, communications, power, rovers, suits, and dust-tolerant procedures survive beyond a single flag-and-photo visit.
Mission note: Artemis II: April 1-10, 2026; 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes; farthest distance 252,756 miles; closest lunar pass about 4,067 miles.
Hardware note: SLS Block 1 is 322 feet tall with about 8.8 million pounds of thrust; Orion returns under parachutes after lunar-speed reentry.
Desk note: The next named problem is docking: Orion plus commercial lander plus suits plus crew transfer before anyone works near the South Pole.