Artemis II: Back to the Moon

The Artemis II space mission realises NASA’s bid, since 1972, to put humans back on the moon. NASA’s Apollo 17 programme in December 1972 marked the last human footsteps on the Moon — more than 50 years ago. Commander Reid Weisman, pilot Victor Glober, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen were the astronaut crew chosen to chart this next path beyond Earth’s borders. The Artemis II mission aims to prove human spaceflight capabilities and pave the way for future lunar exploration.

The Artemis II rocket system was assembled at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center from November 2020 to October 2025. The ten-day journey sent the crew more than 400,000 km from Earth on a looping trajectory that carried them around the moon’s far side and back. Although Artemis II did not land on the Moon, it is a crucial step towards a planned 2028 landing, systematically testing spacecraft systems, mapping routes, and validating the data metrics future missions rely on.

The course had eight key steps. Lift-off from Florida occurred on 1 April at 6:35pm., with the rocket entering high Earth orbit. This orbit sits around 35,000 km above Earth and is used for long-term satellite observation and communication, including TV broadcasting and weather monitoring. The next step was Artemis II separating from its launcher, a portable device designed to protect the rocket's main capsule during launch. Following this, Artemis II's main engines — producing 8.8 million pounds of thrust at lift-off — sent the capsule into a lunar flyby, where it followed the moon's trajectory path without entering its orbit. These steps represented the outbound mission phase.

The inbound return phase began on day ten around 11:30 p.m., when the Artemis II capsule separated from its service module, a rocket component that provides essentials like oxygen, water, and power. The capsule then veered off its lunar trajectory, plunging toward the Earth's atmosphere at roughly 35 times the speed of sound, towards the splashdown site in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. A planned communications blackout occurs during atmospheric re-entry, as the extreme speed heats and compresses air molecules into a superheated plasma layer that blocks signals. At around midnight, the first parachutes were deployed, located in an upper body tube of the rocket motor. The parachutes slow down the craft, enabling it to safely descend and splash down. Following this, the astronauts exited the craft and were transferred to a waiting US transport dock ship.

"You can see the entire globe from pole to pole. It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks,’’ said Commander Reid Weisman during the first day of orbit. The Artemis II mission reignited a widespread curiosity about life beyond Earth and whether humans one day could reach or even live on the moon. Set for 2028, Artemis V is expected to launch, marking NASA’s push for long-term exploration of the moon with one crewed lunar landing per year. This refers to NASA’s quest to build a ‘moon economy' — a commercial ecosystem of services and industries designed to support lunar missions and sustain long-term human presence on the moon. What once belonged to science fiction magazines and comic strips is slowly becoming a reality. "Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of. It is your hopes for the future that carry us on this journey around the Moon," said Jeremy Hansen, representing a broader message about the scale of human possibility. Investing in space exploration lets us study the origins of Earth’s history, while also imagining a future where life beyond Earth becomes possible.

Illustration by Isabelle Holloway