Artemis II mission will carry astronauts around the Moon

NASA's Artemis II is scheduled to send four astronauts on a roughly 10‑day crewed flyby of the Moon using the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule, and a space policy expert described decades of technical and policy choices that led to this test flight.

NASA is preparing to launch the Artemis II crewed test flight as soon as April 2026, using the Space Launch System heavy‑lift rocket and the Orion crew capsule to send four astronauts on a roughly 10‑day loop around the Moon. The mission is a flight test meant to exercise Orion's life support, navigation and reentry systems and to validate the SLS rocket with a crew aboard. Space policy expert Scott Pace traced the program's path back through decisions after the shuttle era and two shuttle accidents, explaining how those choices led to capsules, heavy lift, and the current Artemis architecture. The Artemis program is presented as an international and commercial partnership with goals that include a sustained lunar presence. Key facts: - The Artemis II flight will carry four crew members on a multi‑day lunar flyby using the SLS rocket and the Orion crew vehicle. - Mission controllers will check boosters at launch, verify Orion's environmental control and life support system in Earth orbit, then make a go/no‑go decision for the translunar injection burn. - The flight follows a free‑return trajectory that will loop the crew past the Moon and bring them back to Earth, with reentry and splashdown planned at mission end. - Orion's heat shield performance is a central focus; the heat shield used on Artemis II is the same design flown on Artemis I and will be monitored during reentry. - Scott Pace described how policy and technical choices since the shuttle era influenced the shift to crew capsules and the development of the SLS and Orion. Summary: Artemis II is a test flight intended to validate crewed operations of SLS and Orion and to gather data on life support and reentry performance that will inform subsequent missions. Officials plan to review telemetry and hardware performance after splashdown to determine readiness for later Artemis activities and international and commercial steps toward a longer lunar presence.