Artemis II launches crew toward Moon as NASA tests systems for future landing

The crew, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will not land on the Moon. Instead, Artemis II is following a free return trajectory that uses the Moon’s gravity to swing Orion around the far side and send it back toward Earth without another major propulsive change to the overall path. NASA describes the mission as the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket.

The spacecraft is expected to reach the Moon around April 6, about six days into the mission, after spending roughly one to two days in high Earth orbit for systems checks and then performing a translunar injection burn to head outward. During the flyby, Orion is expected to pass roughly 4,000 to 6,000 miles beyond the lunar surface before beginning the return leg. Splashdown is planned in the Pacific Ocean on April 10.

Over the next several days, the astronauts will test life support, communications, navigation, propulsion, and manual piloting functions in deep space. NASA says one of the mission’s main goals is to validate how Orion performs with a crew aboard in the actual environment it will face on later lunar missions. Reentry will also be a major test, with the capsule expected to hit Earth’s atmosphere at about 25,000 miles per hour before recovery teams retrieve it at sea.

What comes next has changed from NASA’s earlier Artemis roadmap. Under the agency’s updated architecture announced in February, Artemis III, now scheduled for 2027, will be a low Earth orbit rendezvous and docking demonstration involving Orion and one or both commercial lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin. NASA now targets Artemis IV in 2028 for the first Artemis lunar landing.

That means Artemis II is no longer simply the final step before a landing attempt. It is now the mission that bridges the uncrewed Artemis I flight in 2022 and a more staged return plan in which NASA will first test docking and integrated operations in Earth orbit before sending astronauts down to the lunar surface. The broader goal remains a long term human presence on and around the Moon, with Mars still framed as the longer horizon.