Four Astronauts Are About to Fly Around the Moon for the First Time Since 1972

After 53 years, humanity returns to deep space. Meet the crew breaking new ground.

For the first time since December 1972, humans are leaving Earth orbit. This April, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will launch aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, strapped into the Orion spacecraft, and embark on a 10-day journey that will take them farther from home than any crewed mission in history. Artemis II isn’t a lunar landing—not yet. But it is humanity’s proof of concept that we’re ready to go back to the Moon, and stay.

The last humans to venture beyond low Earth orbit were Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ronald Evans. They launched on December 7, 1972, circled the Moon, and landed in the Taurus Mountains for three moonwalks totaling 75 hours on the surface. That was 53 years ago. For anyone under 55, Artemis II will be the first time in their living memory that humans leave the immediate sphere of Earth. The scale of that hiatus is almost difficult to grasp: we’ve built the internet, smartphones, and orbiting space stations in the time since we last flew to the Moon.

But the crew and mission represent something new. Wiseman, a veteran astronaut, commands a team that breaks historical barriers: Glover will be the first person of color to leave Earth orbit; Koch will be the first woman; and Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, will be the first human outside the United States to travel around the Moon. In a single mission, Artemis II shatters the old Apollo-era narrative of spaceflight as the province of American astronauts alone.

The mission itself is a carefully choreographed validation flight. Over the first two days, the crew will manually test Orion’s systems and handling characteristics near Earth. Then the spacecraft will perform a translunar injection burn, sending it on a four-day outbound journey. The flight path traces a figure-eight pattern around the far side of the Moon, extending the spacecraft more than 230,000 miles from Earth. At its closest, the crew will fly approximately 4,600 miles beyond the lunar surface—farther than any human has ever ventured from home. They’ll evaluate Orion’s systems the entire way, gathering data on how the spacecraft and its crew handle deep space radiation, microgravity, and the stresses of a free-return trajectory.

Then comes the return: a four-day coast back to Earth, culminating in reentry at approximately 25,000 miles per hour. It’s a blistering speed, a record for crewed flight, and a critical test of Orion’s heat shield.

Why does a 10-day flight around the Moon matter so much? Because Artemis II is the essential stepping stone. NASA and its contractors—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and others—have built entirely new spacecraft and launch systems. The SLS is humanity’s most powerful rocket since Saturn V. Orion is a modern spacecraft, designed with 21st-century avionics, life support, and safety redundancies. If Artemis II succeeds, if the crew returns safely with confirmed data on the system’s performance, then Artemis III becomes possible: a crewed lunar landing, likely within the next few years.

And beyond that? Lunar bases. Sustained human presence on the Moon. A staging point for human missions to Mars.

But none of that happens if Artemis II fails to execute. Which is why, despite the celebration surrounding the mission’s preparation—the crew entered quarantine in February as launch neared—there’s a quiet gravity to it all. These four astronauts aren’t exploring a frontier. They’re proving that humanity remembers how to explore at all. After 53 years, they’re showing us the way back.

Artemis II launches no earlier than April 1, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.