Artemis II

Artemis II is a planned lunar spaceflight mission under the Artemis program, led by NASA. It is intended to be the second flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), and the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft. It is the first crewed deep space mission since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the first since then to reach the Moon's vicinity. The mission will launch no earlier than April 1, 2026.

The 10-day mission will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth. Glover will become the first person of color, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first person not from the United States to reach deep space and the Moon's vicinity. At a distance of roughly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) beyond the Moon, the flight is set to take the crew farther from Earth than any previous crewed mission, before reentering Earth's atmosphere at a record speed of approximately 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 km/h).

Artemis II was originally designated Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) and was initially intended to support the now-canceled Asteroid Redirect Mission. Its objectives were revised following the establishment of the Artemis program, and are now comparable to Apollo 8, the first crewed Moon mission of the Apollo program.