Go for the Moon: Getting Hyped for Artemis 2!

Article January 31, 2026

OH COME ON, like I was going to talk about ANYTHING this week but Artemis 2/II/Two?? And fine, for my own sanity I’ll settle on calling it Artemis 2, but for the record I’ve seen it written out all those ways (NASA itself seems to have settled on Artemis II).

The rocket for Artemis 2 is on the launch pad. Credit: NASA/Jim Ross

At the time I am writing this we’ve just gotten the news that the big final test for the rocket, the Wet Dress Rehearsal, did not go as planned on February 2 and the launch has been pushed to March, which means I get to spend a few more weeks stewing in anticipation before finally getting to see this giant bird fly.

I have not seen nearly enough hype about this mission. Okay, I know it’s not landing on the Moon, but this is still the first time humans are going to be breaking out of Earth orbit since 1972, and if that was all that was happening it would be worth getting worked up about. But wait, there’s more! So let’s learn a little more about how and why humanity is finally going back to the Moon.

Farewell Apollo

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that if you’re reading a space blog you’re aware of NASA’s Project Apollo missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Apollo program consisted of eleven crewed missions, nine of which exited Earth orbit to head to the Moon, and six of which actually involved a landing on the Moon.

When the final Apollo flight landed in December 1972, NASA kind of took a break from the whole spaceflight thing for a while. Aside from a few sort of side projects (Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab), NASA didn’t’ send anyone back into space with any regularity until the first launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981.

The launch of the first space shuttle mission. Note that at this point the gas tanks were painted white. This was later changed to orange to make them more visibly distinct from the shuttle orbiters during launch. Credit: NASA

By that time the ambition was to build out humanity’s presence in Earth orbit. The shuttle was meant to be a space truck, making routine, easy, and inexpensive trips to orbit to help create and supply some form of space station (or possibly a series of them). That ambition, of course, was never fully realized as launching the shuttle never became routine, easy, or inexpensive. It did play a key role in helping build the ISS though, so we love it for that!

During this time any thought of going back to the Moon was at best a pipe dream. After all, we’d already been there. Going back would be expensive and time consuming and why bother when we have a perfectly good space station only 250 miles up?

But of course we won’t have the ISS forever. In fact, we’ll only have it for another few years. And in the meantime lunar ambitions have been reignited for a wide variety of reasons ranging from financial interest to political clout to scientific discovery to just because we can. Hence Project Apollo’s successor, Project Artemis.

Side note: Artemis, named for the goddess of the Moon, makes a much more sensible name for a lunar exploration program than one named for the Sun god Apollo. But I digress.

Hail Artemis!

The 2000s saw a series of started-and-stopped programs intent on extending human presence in space past Earth orbit, not all of which were focused on the Moon (looking at you Asteroid Redirect Mission, RIP), bits and pieces of which eventually got added to and coalesced in 2019 under the official name Project Artemis.

This still from a video showing the entire flight shows off the proposed flight path for Artemis 2. Credit: NASA Science Visualization Studio

Artemis’s goal, as listed on the NASA website, is “exploring the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars.” Basically if we want to learn to live on Mars, we’d better learn to live on the Moon first. Like Mars, the Moon is also a pretty rough place with many similar challenges and it’s a lot closer to help and a breathable atmosphere if something goes wrong.

So the goal is to put humans back on the surface of the Moon, but you can’t just go straight there with unproven hardware. You better make sure all the critical bits—the rocket, the space capsule, and the lunar lander—work before you put humans in them.

The lander…well, if you’ve been following any of SpaceX’s foibles with Starship, which is supposed to be the chosen vehicle, you know that part isn’t going great. As for testing the rocket and the capsule without crew aboard, that’s what Artemis 1 was for! Once it happened, that is.

Artemis 1

Sweet Carl Sagan was this mission cursed. The fact that it eventually successfully happened is pretty miraculous. After ten years of developing the SLS rocket (with many delays) and more like 15 years developing the Orion space capsule (same), Artemis 1 was finally fully built, with all its components attached, in October 2021. Then a series of tests proved the rocket still had some work to be done and it took a while to actually roll it out.

It rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building in March 2022 and underwent that Big Test that Artemis 2 is currently waiting for, the Wet Dress Rehearsal. It failed three times to complete the test. Back to the VAB it went. It rolled out again in June and underwent the WDR again. It technically didn’t complete it again, but enough got done that NASA said “good enough” which, frankly, is not generally an attitude NASA likes to adopt. But it still needed some work so back to the VAB it went. (Keep your fingers crossed that Artemis 2 isn’t following in its predecessor’s footsteps.)

It came back out in August targeting late August for launch. Let’s just jump ahead: due to a constant series of events ranging from leaks to two hurricanes, one of which required the rocket to go back to the VAB again, it didn’t launch until mid-November. The Orion capsule left Earth orbit, flew around the Moon, and safely returned. Mostly everything went fine, though there was an issue with the heat shield burning off more than it was expected to. Which…well they did figure out why it happened but didn’t update the heat shield in time for Artemis 2. So that’s fun.

Artemis 2

All of which brings us to Artemis 2! This mission will more or less repeat the major beats of Artemis 1’s flight, only this time with people onboard. The crew consists of NASA flight veterans Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover, as well as Canadian rookie astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Side note: can you imagine your very first spaceflight being humanity’s return to lunar orbit after over half a century? Best of luck Jeremy Hansen. But I digress again.

After launch this crew will spend roughly 24 hours in a high Earth orbit, conducting piloting tests of the Orion capsule such as rendezvousing with the depleted upper stage of the SLS rocket. Then they head to the Moon, firing Orion’s engines in a maneuver called trans-lunar injection.

It will take Orion about four days to cruise to the Moon. It will then swing behind the Moon, putting the body of our satellite between itself and Earth and cutting off contact with the crew as human eyes gaze down on the lunar far side for the first time in decades. When the spacecraft emerges from behind the Moon it will already be on its way back to Earth.

That’s because of something called a free-return trajectory. By not actually entering orbit around the Moon, Orion can instead use the momentum it gains from interacting with the Moon’s gravity to slingshot itself back towards Earth without ever firing its engines (a move famously used by the Apollo 13 mission after its disastrous explosion made firing its big engine a Bad Idea).

An artist’s rendition of what it might look like when Artemis 2 undergoes translunar injection—firing its engine to send it out of Earth orbit and towards the Moon. Credit: NASA

About ten days after launch Artemis 2 will hit Earth’s atmosphere—and skip. A skip reentry essentially allows the spacecraft to move across Earth’s atmosphere like a well-flung flat stone across water, skipping and spilling off speed before diving into the depths (aka before actually reentering the atmosphere). Splashdown will be in the Pacific off of San Diego.

This mission will not only include the first woman (Koch), person of color (Glover), and non-American (Hansen) to break Earth orbit, it will also set new records for the fastest humans have ever gone, with a new speed record expected to be set during reentry, as well as the farthest humans have ever gone from Earth, with the swing behind the Moon carrying the spacecraft much farther than any Apollo mission went. But, you know, it’s not landing, so no big deal.

To the Future!

And after Artemis 2 lands? Eh, that’s a little cloudy. Assuming Artemis 2 goes smoothly, Artemis 3 is supposed to be the one to actually put humans back on the surface of the Moon. But we need a lunar landing vehicle for that and at the moment we don’t have one. It’s supposed to be SpaceX’s Starship, but that vehicle has yet to actually make it to Earth orbit (it has done a few long suborbital lobs and also exploded several times).

The official target date for Artemis 3 is sometime in 2027 which pretty much everyone agrees isn’t actually going to happen given things with the lander. In October 2025, then acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said he would be reopening the contract for providing the Artemis 3 lunar lander, given SpaceX’s delays. But not much more has been heard about that and even if they gave out a new lander contract, there’s no way a fully new lander is going to get built and tested properly in time for a 2027 Moon landing.

An artist’s rendition of the proposed lunar space station, the Lunar Gateway. Credit: NASA

There’s also the question of the Lunar Gateway, a small space station being designed to support landings from lunar orbit. At the moment the timeline has that coming online around Artemis 5, but there have been rumblings that NASA could shift its focus to Gateway for Artemis 3 and maybe 4 if we don’t have a lander ready and don’t want to wait too long between missions.

But before any of that can happen, you have to have Artemis 2. Everyone remembers Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon but fewer remember Apollo 10, which went to the Moon but didn’t land just to prove it was safe and possible for Neil and Buzz to make that final leap. Hopefully this time we’ll all be able to appreciate the wonder of what we’re seeing as Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen leave our planet behind and mark humanity’s return to lunar space.

We’re going back to the Moon y’all!