NASA’s Artemis II mission launched successfully on April 1, 2026, sending four astronauts into space on the first crewed US mission bound for the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA’s Space Launch System lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 18:35 local time.
The countdown moved ahead without any major issues, apart from a temperature warning involving one of Orion’s launch abort system batteries that controllers treated as a sensor issue rather than a hardware problem.
Minutes after the launch, the boosters and core stage separated on schedule, and Orion’s solar arrays deployed as planned.
The 10-day test flight began with Orion entering Earth orbit, where the crew will spend about a day checking out the spacecraft’s systems before the translunar injection burn on flight day 2 sends them toward the Moon.
NASA’s mission plan calls for the crew to swing around the far side of the Moon and then head back to Earth for splashdown in the Pacific on flight day 10.
NASA’s daily mission agenda shows Orion will enter the Moon’s sphere of influence on flight day 5 and make its closest pass on flight day 6, when the crew will come within roughly 4,000 to 6,000 miles of the lunar surface. The astronauts are expected to spend much of that day photographing the Moon and recording observations before heading home.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman called Artemis II “the opening act” and “the test mission” for Orion, saying the flight is meant to set up subsequent missions and a “golden age of science and discovery.”
NASA’s future plans have changed from the original sequence. Under the revised schedule NASA published on February 27, 2026, Artemis III is now a 2027 low-Earth-orbit demonstration mission to test rendezvous and docking with commercial lunar landers.
NASA now targets Artemis IV for the first Artemis lunar landing in 2028. Under that plan, astronauts would travel to lunar orbit aboard Orion, transfer to a commercial lander, descend to the surface, then return to Orion for the trip home.
NASA has said the revised architecture is designed to support annual lunar missions after that. Artemis V is planned as a follow-on surface mission as the agency builds toward a sustained human presence with a base on the Moon.