Artemis 2 Mission: mission and targets

Project start

April 1, 2026

Declared end

April 10, 2026

The start the archive declares is the start of the project, not the launch, and an end it does not declare does not mean the mission is still running.

Targets you can open in 3D:

• Earth
• Moon

A declared target is what the archive files the mission’s data under, not a record of observation.

The Artemis II mission was the first crewed test mission under NASA's Artemis program. On April 1, 2026, four astronauts launched aboard the Orion spacecraft on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for a nearly 10-day voyage around the Moon. The Artemis II crew members were NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (Commander), Victor Glover (Pilot), and Christina Koch (Mission Specialist 1), along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist 2). Science observations included opportunistic imaging and observations around Earth and during transit to the Moon on Flight Days 1 to 5, Lunar Flyby on Flight Day 6, and additional opportunistic imaging during the return to Earth on Flight Days 7 to 10. After traveling more than 695,000 miles, the crew members splashed down on April 10, 2026 in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California. At their farthest point, the crew traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, setting a record for the greatest distance humans have traveled in space.

Quoted in English, as the archive publishes it, read on October 4, 2026.

Identifier in the archive, which is its citation: urn:nasa:pds:context:investigation:mission.artemis2

NASA Planetary Data System, PDS Registry, investigation context products. Dates and targets read on September 29, 2026; how to cite the archive: https://pds.nasa.gov/datastandards/citing/

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