NASA’s Artemis II With 4 Astronauts Aboard Lifts Off For Historic Lunar Space Mission

More than 50 years after the last human mission to the Moon, NASA’s Artemis-II mission carrying four astronauts successfully lifted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday.

Artemis II, humanity’s first crewed mission to the Moon’s neighbourhood since Apollo 17 in 1972, is a 10-day journey around the Moon and back. The four astronauts on the mission are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.

Victor Glover has become the first person of colour, Christina Koch the first woman, and Jeremy Hansen the first non-American to travel beyond low-Earth orbit. Koch, a 47-year-old electrical engineer from North Carolina, already holds the record

for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 328 days.

Hansen is the only first-time flyer among the four and may experience space adaptation syndrome, an extreme form of motion sickness that affects around half of all first-time astronauts.

The crew on the 10-day mission won’t land on the Moon, but will circle it, while travelling further from Earth than anyone has ever been before.

Ahead of the launch, the spacecraft suffered a minor issue with the Launch Abort System. One of its two batteries showed a temperature outside normal limits. However, the issue was addressed and resolved.

What Exactly Will Artemis II Do?

Artemis-II builds on the success of the uncrewed Artemis-I in 2022, and will demonstrate a broad range of capabilities needed for deep space missions. It will be NASA’s first mission with crew aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. It is structured as a crewed deep space test mission, not a landing attempt.

After the successful liftoff, the mission begins cautiously. The crew will spend about 25 hours orbiting Earth, testing systems and ensuring everything functions as expected before committing to deep space. Only after this verification will Orion perform the engine burn required to head toward the Moon, roughly 244,000 miles away. According to NASA, the journey from Earth orbit to the Moon itself takes about three days.

Once near the Moon, Orion will not enter orbit or descend. Instead, it will follow a free-return trajectory, flying around the Moon and slingshotting back toward Earth. On the closest approach, astronauts are expected to witness rarely seen regions of the lunar far side, with the Moon appearing roughly the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.

Why Won’t Artemis II Land On The Moon?

The fundamental reason is technical: the Orion spacecraft is not built to land. It is designed as a deep-space transport vehicle, not a lunar lander. It lacks the systems required for descent, landing and ascent from the Moon’s surface. As a result, even if astronauts reach lunar proximity, they have no way to physically touch down.

Orion will carry astronauts to lunar orbit in future missions, but the actual landing will be carried out using specialised spacecraft being developed separately by private partners such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Was Launch Delayed?

NASA’s March 2026 launch window was scrubbed after engineers found a problem with helium flow to the rocket’s upper stage.

This followed an earlier scrub in February 2026 due to issues during the wet dress rehearsal, after which NASA rolled the rocket back into the Vehicle Assembly Building on February 25 to preserve the April launch window, before rolling it back out to the pad on March 20.