NASA says its long-delayed Artemis II mission could launch as early as February, sending four astronauts into lunar orbit as the United States accelerates its return-to-the-moon program under President Donald Trump.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The United States is preparing to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time in more than half a century, with NASA’s Artemis II mission expected to launch as soon as February, marking a major milestone in America’s renewed push for human space exploration.
The Artemis II mission, which will carry a four-person crew into orbit around the moon, represents the first crewed lunar flight since the final Apollo mission in 1972 and the first time astronauts will venture beyond low-Earth orbit in more than five decades. NASA confirmed the target timeline in a New Year’s Day announcement highlighting the agency’s goals for 2026, accompanied by a message posted on social media showing the Orion spacecraft and declaring, “Onward to the Moon in 2026!”
According to reporting by CNN, the Artemis II mission could lift off as early as February and will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a roughly 10-day journey around the moon. The mission will not include a lunar landing but is designed to test critical systems needed for future surface missions.
NBC News reported that Artemis II will serve as a crucial test of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, both of which have faced years of technical challenges, delays and cost overruns. The system has never carried a human crew. Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight, successfully orbited the moon for three and a half weeks in 2022.
NASA officials say the mission will test life-support systems, navigation, docking maneuvers and crew operations in deep space, first in Earth orbit and then around the moon. The astronauts recently completed a full launch-day rehearsal, which included donning flight suits, boarding the Orion capsule and running through the countdown sequence to just before liftoff, according to a NASA update.
Returning humans to the moon has been a priority for President Donald Trump since his first term, when the Artemis program was established in 2019. The initiative preserved the Space Launch System and Orion capsule from earlier stalled programs and shifted NASA’s near-term focus back to the moon, pushing crewed missions to Mars further into the future.
During Trump’s second term, the administration has placed renewed emphasis on the geopolitical and strategic dimensions of space exploration, particularly amid growing competition with China, which has pledged to land its own astronauts on the moon by 2030. Last week, Trump signed an executive order directing NASA to prioritize “expanding human reach and American presence in space,” with the goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface by 2028.
“Within the next three years, we are going to land American astronauts again on the moon, but this time with the infrastructure to stay,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told NBC News following his swearing-in.
Beyond geopolitical considerations, scientists say the return to the moon offers an unprecedented opportunity to study its origins and evolution. Artemis III, currently planned for 2027, is expected to land astronauts near the moon’s south pole, a region far different from the equatorial landing sites of the Apollo era. Permanently shadowed craters in the south polar region are believed to contain significant deposits of water ice, a resource considered essential for sustaining long-term human presence and enabling future missions deeper into the solar system.
Planetary scientist Brett Denevi of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory said decades of unanswered questions remain about the moon’s formation and early history. “Earth is kind of a terrible record-keeper,” she told NBC News, noting that geological processes have erased much of Earth’s earliest history, while the moon’s surface preserves evidence dating back billions of years.
Artemis II is widely viewed as a make-or-break moment for NASA’s return-to-the-moon ambitions. “This is the culmination of what is now almost a 15-year effort,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, told NBC News. “Assuming it works, it’ll be seen as a major win for the administration. But if this doesn’t work, or if something calamitous happens, that will really reset everything.”
No exact launch date has been announced, but NASA officials say the mission is expected to lift off between February and April, setting the stage for the first human footsteps on the moon in a new generation of exploration.
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