For the first time in 54 years, the United States reached for stars. NASA sent four astronauts in the Artemis II spaceship around the moon, reaching further than any previous mission in history, marking it the furthest space travel by mankind in history. By achieving this milestone, NASA and the world marked a historic return to distant space travel that hasn’t been attempted since Neil Armstrong and the Apollo missions in the late 60s and the early 70s.
The Artemis II launch on April 1, 2026, took off aboard the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida. The four astronaut team traveled in the Orion spacecraft, which carried them on their 10-day journey around the moon and back to Earth, to return the first people to the moon since the Apollo missions. The four astronauts, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, were not only the crew to travel the furthest from Earth, but the crew contained the first woman, person of color, and Canadian to travel to the moon.
“I wasn’t ready for how small I was,” Pilot Victor Glover said after returning home from the missions.
During the mission, the crew tested critical systems needed for human survival in the deep reaches of space. This included, but was not limited to: life support systems (oxygen supply), as well as navigation and communication technology. The mission, built on the success of Artemis I, launched Nov. 16, 2022, which tested these same support systems with no living crew aboard.
NASA officials have stated that the Artemis missions are a crucial step towards NASA and the world’s future lunar missions. The crew’s data and experience that they gained on this mission will help prepare for Artemis III, which plans on landing astronauts on the moon later in this decade, and the rest of the missions.
“In all of this emptiness — this whole bunch of nothing we call the universe — you have this oasis [of Earth], this beautiful place that we get to exist in together,” Glover said.
Beyond the achievements in technology and overall knowledge of space, Artemis II also inspired people around the world, much like the Apollo missions of the 60s and 70s. This mission has renewed the excitement about space travel and exploration, and has shown us that humans are once again capable of traveling beyond the Earth, bringing us even closer to the conquest of the stars. With the future Artemis missions to have a sustainable presence on the moon by the late 2020’s.
