The first piloted flight in the Artemis program launched on Wednesday, April 1 at 3:24 PST. This mission will be the closest that humans have gotten to the moon in more than 50 years, and will mark the furthest humans will have traveled into space. The last manned mission to the moon was aboard NASA’s Apollo 17, in 1972.

However, unlike the Apollo 17 mission, this voyage will have the four astronauts travel around the moon, but not land there. This is a test launch of the Orion spacecraft meant to verify the ship’s life support systems. This is the stepping stone to future advancements leading us back to the moon and eventually to Mars. 

The goal is to conduct a 10-day mission to orbit the moon before landing into the Pacific Ocean. So far the launch has gone well and is on track to return April 10, 2026.  “When we get off the planet, we might come right back home. We might spend three or four days around Earth. We might go to the moon,” said Reid Wiseman, the commander for the Artemis II mission.

The Artemis mission is an ongoing NASA program that will have a launch about once a year with the goal to land on the surface of the moon by 2028. The end goal is to advance space technology so that we can send astronauts to Mars. 

Artemis I was the original launch of the Orion spacecraft back in 2022 to make sure it could handle the exiting and reentering of the atmosphere. Artemis II is the current phase of the program which sent a four person crew around the moon.

The crew consists of commander Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, astronaut Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Wiseman has previously lived on the International Space Station (ISS). Glover piloted the Crew-1 SpaceX mission and served as an ISS flight engineer. Koch was a part of the first all female spacewalks. This will be Hansen’s first mission to space and he also is the first Canadian astronaut to go to space.

Kenneth Chang, a writer for the New York Times, said, “Unlike the Apollo astronauts, who were all white men, this mission sets a number of firsts: Mr. Glover of NASA will be the first Black man to venture into deep space and Ms. Koch of NASA will be the first woman to do so. Mr. Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency will be the first person on a moon mission who is not an American.”

The Artemis II launch was successful. There were technical difficulties involving communication and a pre-launch battery concern, but all were resolved before takeoff. They successfully reached orbit and are now on track to complete their 10-day mission.