artemis 2

Artemis II is a planned lunar spaceflight mission under the Artemis program, led by NASA. It is intended to be the second flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), and the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft. It is both the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit and the first crewed mission around the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The first launch window is scheduled for February 8–11, 2026.

The 10-day mission will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth. Glover will become the first person of color, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American to leave low Earth orbit and to travel around the Moon. The flight is set to take the crew farther from Earth than any previous human mission, before reentering Earth's atmosphere at a record speed of approximately 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 km/h).