🌊 Everything to Know About the Artemis II Mission

Why, after 53 years, is the US interested in the Moon again?

It took humanity just 66 years to go from the Wright brothers’ first powered flight to Apollo 11’s lunar landing. Yet in 2026, it’s been over 53 years since we last had boots on the Moon.

The final mission of that era – Apollo 17, launched on December 7, 1972 – was a resounding success. The 12-day voyage set multiple records, including the longest lunar surface stay (about 75 hours), the longest total moonwalk time (over 22 hours), and the largest haul of lunar samples (roughly 254 pounds, including the famous orange solid discovered at Shorty Crater).

But after that, humans never went back.

Artemis II is the mission meant to change that.

On April 1, 2026, NASA launched four astronauts – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen – from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop the agency’s powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Their roughly 10-day journey consists of a crewed flight around the Moon, testing systems and paving the way for surface missions.

But why is NASA going back now? And what took it so long to make the trip?

That’s the subject of today’s deep-dive.

During the 1960s, the Soviet Union’s early leads – first dog, human, and satellite in orbit – spurred the US to pour enormous resources into its Apollo missions, aimed at beating the Soviets to put people on the Moon’s surface. At its peak, NASA accounted for roughly 4.4% of the entire federal budget, compared to roughly 0.3% today.

The Apollo program was peak Cold War: Landing on the moon would signal technological (and therefore ideological) superiority to the peoples of the world.

Of course (if you believe the textbooks), the US won the space race, with Neil Armstrong planting the lunar flag in 1969. From there, each mission yielded new research but less political payoff – particularly as the USSR started to decline. Between the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), the Chernobyl disaster (1986), and Gorbachev’s reforms, the US lost its desire to invest billions in the space race.

Really, by beating its competitor in the space race, the US lost all motivation to go back. Space funding dried up, and subsequent missions focused on scientific study and international cooperation on the International Space Station (ISS).

Until now.