Artemis II is a spaceship opening new doors for space travel, and many are shocked by it! The Artemis program is a plan by NASA to have people live on the Moon and get ready for trips to Mars. The Artemis program started with Artemis I in 2022, which was a test flight without any people on the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Then came Artemis II, which was the time people went on a mission for the Artemis program. Next, there will be Artemis III, which will try landing on the Moon, and Artemis IV, which will take people back to the Moon. 

Artemis II went up to space on April 1st, 2026, from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There were four people on the spacecraft: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The Artemis II mission did not land on the Moon- it was a test to see if the Orion spacecraft could support the people on board for 10 days. During the trip, the people on the spacecraft did some practice flying near the rocket and tried out controls, which went really far. It went about 6,400 miles past the other side of the Moon. They used the Moon’s gravity to swing towards Earth, which is a pretty cool trick. 

The spacecraft went a record distance of 252,756 miles from our planet. When they were near the Moon, the astronauts saw the Moon’s surface. They even saw a solar eclipse, which is when the Moon blocks the Sun. The Artemis II mission ended on April 10th, 2026, when the Orion spacecraft, called “Integrity,” came back into the Earth’s atmosphere and landed in the Pacific Ocean. The USS John P. Murtha picked it up from the water near San Diego.