Your Guide to NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission

Space agency is targeting Wednesday for the historic journey—its first to the moon in more than half a century.

Jack Daleo

Tuesday, March 31, 2026 at 05:00 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Artemis II crewmembers Reid Wiseman (from left), Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen stand before NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday. [Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls]

Key Takeaways:

Artemis II is a 10-day crewed mission with four astronauts set to travel farther from Earth than any human before, aiming to test the Orion capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket's systems and procedures in deep space, without landing on the moon.
The mission is a crucial, high-stakes step for NASA's Artemis program, essential for validating technology and operations towards future lunar landings, establishing a moon base, and enabling Mars missions, despite significant past delays, cost overruns, and inherent risks.
Employing advanced SLS and Orion vehicles, the mission will execute a complex trajectory involving Earth orbit operations, translunar injection, a slingshot maneuver around the moon, and a free-return atmospheric re-entry to test critical components like the heat shield and prepare for subsequent lunar exploration.

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The countdown has begun. The crew is ready. And barring any last-minute hiccups, four astronauts on Wednesday will begin a journey that sends them farther from Earth than any human has gone before.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen—the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission—are expected to travel more than 230,000 miles from Earth and 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the moon during their 10-day trip.