Artemis II Carries Astronauts Around the Moon

On April 1, 2026, NASA launched the Artemis II mission from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The flight was the first crewed test of both the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft, which the crew named Integrity. Carrying commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, the flight sent humans beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the conclusion of Apollo 17 in 1972. Hansen became the first Canadian to venture beyond low Earth orbit, while Glover, Koch, and Wiseman set programmatic milestones as the first person of color, the first woman, and the oldest astronaut to travel around the Moon.

The mission's path to the launch pad required extensive technical validation following the uncrewed flight of Artemis I in 2022. Post-flight inspections of the earlier capsule revealed unanticipated erosion and char loss in its AVCOAT ablative heat shield during atmospheric reentry. NASA engineers identified that hot gases had become trapped within the material, causing cracking and spalling. In December 2024, NASA announced that it would fly a heat shield of the same design rather than rebuild it, changing the return trajectory to limit the time the spacecraft spent enduring the heat of reentry. A liquid hydrogen leak found during a fueling rehearsal in February 2026 and other technical problems then pushed liftoff from February into April 2026.