The Essentials
A crewed lunar flyby that turned decades of planning into flight.
Artemis II launched on April 1, 2026 and splashed down on April 10, 2026, completing a nine-day mission and returning humans beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since Apollo.
Official mission length from launch to splashdown.
A complete Earth-Moon-Earth deep-space loop.
A new human-spaceflight distance record.
Closest approach distance from the lunar surface.
Launch To Lunar View
Five views of a mission leaving Earth behind.
Tap the glowing play icons to hear mission audio.
The sky caught fire
Artemis II began with the full SLS and Orion stack climbing toward a crewed lunar-distance mission.
Earthset from Orion
A signature deep-space view, showing Earth slipping behind the lunar horizon from Orion's perspective.
Deep-space eclipse
A dramatic alignment captured while observation work and spacecraft operations continued.
We Will Always Choose Each Other
Inside Orion, the mission became human-scale: procedures, comms, observation, and crew trust in motion.
History Made
Wiseman commands the first crewed Artemis flight; Glover is the first Black astronaut assigned to a lunar mission, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first Canadian to journey lunar distance.
Crew Sequence
Four crew members. One lunar-distance story.
Use the controls to move through the crew and hear their mission audio.
Official NASA Launch Trailer
Around The Moon For All Humanity
A full-width cinematic pause before the story moves from launch imagery into the crew sequence.
Key Players Behind The Scenes
The mission was flown by four. It was carried by thousands.
Tap a dossier card to bring a mission leader into focus.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson
Launch Director, Exploration Ground Systems
NASA's first female launch director, Blackwell-Thompson manages launch countdown plans, launch/scrub turnaround procedures, and cross-program launch integration across SLS, Orion, and EGS.
Global Partners
Three contributors. One spacecraft ecosystem.
Artemis II was led by NASA, carried a Canadian astronaut through the NASA-CSA partnership, and depended on ESA's European Service Module to keep Orion alive, powered, and moving.
Mission Lead
NASA led Artemis II through the SLS launch system, Orion crew spacecraft, astronaut training, mission operations, recovery planning, and agency-wide integration from Kennedy, Johnson, Marshall, and other centers.
Artemis Accords
Why the coalition keeps growing.
NASA and the U.S. Department of State established the Artemis Accords in 2020 with seven other initial signatory nations. As of April 20, 2026, Latvia became the 62nd nation to sign, strengthening a framework for peaceful, transparent, and sustainable exploration.
Orion Spacecraft
Integrity, the spacecraft that carried Artemis II home.
Named by the Artemis II crew, Integrity is Orion at human scale: pressure vessel, heat shield, service module, computers, parachutes, sensors, and hundreds of thousands of parts acting as one spacecraft.
individual parts in NASA's Orion reference guide
supported in the pressurized crew module
initial mission support capability for four astronauts
reentry heating protected by Orion's heat shield
A name built on trust.
The Artemis II crew named their Orion spacecraft Integrity on Sept. 24, 2025. NASA said the name reflects trust, respect, candor, and humility across the crew and the thousands of engineers, technicians, scientists, planners, and dreamers behind mission success.
Trajectory Brief
Free-return precision, human-rated.
Artemis II does not enter lunar orbit. Orion uses Earth phasing loops to line up departure, then a translunar injection burn sends the spacecraft onto a free-return path that lunar gravity bends around the far side and back toward Earth.
What Makes Artemis II So Special
Record distance. Moon science. Human moments.
Tap a card to reveal the deeper story. The glowing controls include real mission audio for the moments NASA released sound from.
Record breaker
Artemis II surpassed Apollo 13's farthest-human-spaceflight distance record during the outbound lunar flyby.
252,756 miles from home.
NASA reported the crew crossed Apollo 13's 248,655-mile mark on April 6, 2026, then continued to a farthest distance of 252,756 miles from Earth.
7,000+ photos
The crew captured more than 7,000 images during lunar flyby, including Earthset, eclipse, and surface-science views.
A science archive in motion.
The images documented impact craters, ancient lava flows, terrain texture, color variation, the lunar terminator, and a rare solar eclipse from Orion's perspective.
Carroll crater
The crew proposed naming one lunar crater "Carroll" in honor of Carroll Taylor Wiseman.
A human name on the Moon.
NASA reported the proposed crater name would honor Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman. The proposals go through the International Astronomical Union.
Real-time troubleshooting
Artemis II turned even unglamorous cabin systems into a deep-space operations lesson.
Mission Control solved the messy bits too.
NASA said the crew and Houston restored Orion's toilet after a fault light, while later wastewater venting work showed how every compact spacecraft system matters.
Heat shield extremes
Orion's 16.5-foot-wide heat shield was built for lunar-return speed and nearly 5,000F / 2,760C outside heating.
Fast enough to turn air into fire.
NASA describes Orion returning at about 25,000 mph. The heat shield's Avcoat material protects crew and capsule as the spacecraft trades velocity for a heat environment near 5,000F / 2,760C.
Historic crew makeup
NASA and CSA flew together to lunar distance, turning Artemis II into a genuinely international milestone.
Four astronauts, one wider doorway.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen carried the first crewed Artemis flight test around the Moon, setting up Artemis III and later lunar operations.
Splashdown Sequence
The Pacific recovery closed the mission in style.
Orion splashed down at 5:07 p.m. PDT on April 10, 2026, off the coast of California, ending a nearly 10-day lunar-distance mission and handing the crew to recovery forces.
Houston, We Have You Loud and Clear
With the drogue and main parachute sequence complete, teams tracked Orion through its final descent corridor and confirmed the crew had clear communications heading into recovery.
Splashdown Confirmed
Orion touched down in the Pacific off California, completing the crewed flight test and beginning the open-water recovery phase with NASA and U.S. military teams.
Back on Earth
After open-water support, the crew were moved by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checks before returning to Houston.
Capsule secured
Divers and deck teams stabilized Orion, attached recovery hardware, and prepared the spacecraft for transfer so engineers could study its postflight condition.
The road to Artemis III opened.
With entry, descent, landing, crew recovery, life-support operations, and lunar-return systems proven with astronauts aboard, Artemis II handed the campaign to the next mission.
Before And After Artemis II
The mission that turned a test program into a lunar campaign.
Artemis II sits in the middle of a fast-moving sequence: Artemis I proved the machine, Artemis II proved crewed deep-space operations, and the next missions push toward docking, landing, and sustained surface presence.
Artemis I proved the stack.
The uncrewed Artemis I flight test validated SLS, Orion, Exploration Ground Systems, deep-space navigation, reentry, splashdown, and postflight recovery before astronauts climbed aboard.
Artemis II proved the crewed profile.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen flew Orion around the Moon, tested human deep-space systems, returned at lunar speed, and splashed down safely in the Pacific.
Artemis III becomes the docking rehearsal.
NASA now describes Artemis III as a low-Earth-orbit demonstration to test rendezvous and docking operations between Orion and one or both commercial lunar lander systems from SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Artemis IV targets the lunar South Pole.
NASA's Artemis IV page describes the mission as humanity's return to the lunar surface: four astronauts launch in Orion, two descend in a commercial lander, and the surface crew works near the Moon's South Pole for about a week.
Artemis V starts building the long game.
NASA anticipates launching Artemis V by late 2028 using the standardized SLS configuration, with future missions planned roughly once per year and the beginning of Moon base construction expected in this phase.
Artemis II was not an isolated triumph. It converted Artemis I data into crewed flight experience, then pushed operations, recovery, communications, life support, navigation, and reentry lessons into the lander demonstrations and lunar surface missions that follow.
This section follows NASA's March 2026 Artemis architecture update: Artemis III becomes a 2027 low-Earth-orbit docking demonstration; Artemis IV is the planned surface return; Artemis V becomes the late-2028 step toward sustained lunar presence.
Bring Artemis II home
Own the mission artwork.
Two museum-grade posters, iconic designs by NASA.
Artemis II "For All Humanity" Poster 1
Buy Poster 1Artemis II "For All Humanity" Poster 2
Buy Poster 2
Sources and republish notes
Built from primary mission material.
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