The Grand Vision Behind the Artemis II Mission

The 10-day lunar flyby was the first domino of NASA’s international movement to go back to the moon and establish a base before communist China.

NASA's Artemis II Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on April 1, 2026. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

HOUSTON—After more than half a century of abandonment, humanity’s first pathway to another world has been rediscovered, and a traffic jam of dreams and ambitions has begun to pile up awaiting its full reopening.

From April 1 to April 10, NASA’s Artemis II mission took NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, around the moon and back for the first time since December 1972.