April 2, 2026

NASA’s Artemis program is the effort to return humans to the Moon and establish a sustained presence there, with Mars as the longer-term destination.

Artemis I (November 2022) was the first uncrewed test of the full stack: SLS rocket and Orion capsule. Orion traveled 1.4 million miles, went into retrograde orbit around the Moon, and splashed down after 25 days. No crew, but a full end-to-end validation.

Artemis II is the first crewed mission — a free-return trajectory around the Moon, not a landing. The crew: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch (NASA), and Jeremy Hansen (CSA). It is the first time a non-American astronaut flies on a lunar mission.

Artemis III is the planned first crewed landing, targeting the lunar south pole. SpaceX Starship is the selected Human Landing System. The south pole is the target because of the presence of water ice in permanently shadowed craters, which matters for future in-situ resource utilization.

Beyond Artemis III, NASA plans to assemble the Gateway — a small station in lunar orbit that will serve as staging point for surface missions. It will not be continuously crewed.

The Artemis Accords, a set of bilateral agreements on norms for civil space exploration, now has over 60 signatories. They cover interoperability, data sharing, avoiding harmful interference, and deconfliction of activities. But beware: they are not a treaty.

See: NASA Artemis