Humanity Returns to the Moon's Doorstep

NASA's Artemis II completes the first crewed lunar flyby in over 50 years — a giant leap back to the cosmos.

NASA / Artemis Mission Blog

April 18, 2026  ·  6 min read

On April 1, 2026, a Saturn V-class roar returned to Florida's Space Coast. NASA's Space Launch System lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, carrying the Orion spacecraft and four astronauts on the most ambitious human spaceflight in over half a century — the Artemis II mission.

~10days total mission

252,760miles from Earth (record)

6,545 kmclosest lunar approach

The crew

Four astronauts strapped into the Orion capsule for the journey, representing NASA and the Canadian Space Agency:

RW

Reid Wiseman

Commander, NASA

VG

Victor Glover

Pilot, NASA

CK

Christina Koch

Mission Specialist, NASA

JH

Jeremy Hansen

Mission Specialist, CSA

The journey: day by day

Apr 1

Artemis II launches from Kennedy Space Center atop the SLS rocket. The crew enters orbit and begins acclimating to deep space.

Apr 2

Translunar injection burn fires at 7:49 PM EDT, propelling Orion out of Earth's orbit toward the Moon at 39,472 km/h.

Apr 5–6

Orion enters the lunar sphere of gravitational influence at 12:37 AM EDT. Mission Specialist Christina Koch declares: "We are now falling to the Moon rather than rising away from Earth."

Apr 6

The historic seven-hour lunar flyby takes place. The crew photographs 30 scientific targets including the Orientale basin. Orion breaks the record for the farthest distance traveled by humans — 252,760 miles from Earth. A 54-minute total solar eclipse is witnessed as the Moon fully blocks the Sun.

Apr 7–9

Three trajectory correction burns steer Orion on its return path. The crew performs a radiation shelter construction demo and manual piloting tests.

Apr 10

Reentry and splashdown. Orion's service module separates 400,000 feet above Earth, and the crew module descends at 25,000 mph before parachutes deploy.

"We are now falling to the Moon rather than rising away from Earth. It is an amazing milestone!" — Christina Koch, Artemis II Mission Specialist

A record-breaking flyby

The highlight of the mission came on Flight Day 6. As Orion swung around the far side of the Moon at a closest approach of 6,545 km, the crew was cut off from mission control for roughly 40 minutes — the Moon blocking all communication signals, just as it had for the Apollo astronauts. When they emerged, they brought back breathtaking imagery: far-side craters in stark relief, an "Earthset" over the lunar horizon with swirling clouds over Australia visible in the distance, and a dramatic solar corona glowing around the darkened lunar disk during totality.

At 1:56 PM EDT, Orion surpassed the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. By 7:07 PM, it reached its maximum of 252,760 miles from Earth — farther than any human has ever been.

What comes next

Artemis II was a crewed test flight, not a landing. Its primary goal was to validate Orion's life-support systems, navigation, communications, and the endurance of a human crew in deep space. That data now feeds directly into Artemis III, which will attempt to land astronauts on the Moon's south pole — a first in history — with a SpaceX Starship Human Landing System. The new space race is no longer hypothetical: China has set 2030 as its crewed lunar target. Artemis II just reminded the world that America has a head start.